The main suspect in the killing of athlete Agnes Tirop will plead to murder charges on November 16.
Diana Milimu, the deputy registrar at the High Court in Eldoret, directed that Ibrahim Rotich undergoes a mental assessment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital before taking the plea.
“Direction is hereby given that the accused person be escorted to the MTRH on Monday, November 15 for a psychiatric examination before taking plea on the following day, on Tuesday, November 16,” said Milimu.
She further ordered that the 41-year-old be remanded at the Eldoret Railways Police Station.
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Earlier in the morning yesterday, Rotich appeared before an Iten court where a miscellaneous file was closed.
State prosecutor Judith Ayuma told the court that the prosecution had overwhelming evidence connecting Rotich to the murder.
Iten Principal Magistrate Charles Kutwa had, on October 18, directed that the accused goes for a mental test. However, it remains unclear why the test had not been done by the time he was arraigned for the second time.
Rotich’s lawyer Ngige Mbugua told the court that they were ready to proceed with the case, noting that the suspect had been in custody since October 15.
Rotich was arrested at a roadblock at Chaani in Changamwe, about six kilometres from Mombasa. Police became suspicious when they flagged him down for a normal inspection but he refused to stop.
Tirop, 25, finished fourth in the 5,000-metre race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in August.
The athlete was found dead in her house in Iten, Elgeyo Marakwet, on October 13.
The postmortem examination by two pathologists at the Iten County Referral Hospital mortuary revealed that Tirop suffered a stab in the neck and was also hit on the head with a blunt object.
She was buried at her parent’s home in Nandi County on October 23, the day when she would have turned 26.
