The rain was pouring down in the dead of night when Ricky Francis Gikandi was rudely awoken from his slumber by armed robbers, all wearing black balaclavas.
It was February 2013. Hours earlier, he had dozed off on the couch in his lounge in Ruring’u, Nyeri, while watching a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United. A quick glance at the wall clock revealed it was 2am.
The wind blew wildly outside and he watched in horror as four intruders descended from the ceiling each holding a battle axe and a glittering carving knife.
In a harsh tone, one of them ordered him to lie prostrate on the ground and put his hands behind his back.
After zip-tying his hands and directing a colleague to guard him, the robbers proceeded to loot valuables worth more than Sh200,000 from his house.
Unknown to him, they had accessed his house while he slept by cutting the kitchen window’s grill and climbing up into the ceiling. “They all sounded like young men to me,” Gikandi would later testify.
Among the things they took away were my Samsung Galaxy phone, TV set, Sony music system, gas cylinder, and clothes,” Mr Gikandi, a Nyeri businessman, testified in court months later. The robbers subjected him to an hour-long ordeal after which he heard them say that they would also raid the house of his neighbour, Peter Koigi, an administrator at a local university.
As they headed to Koigi’s place, the robber who had been guarding Gikandi was left behind to keep a keen eye on him. Koigi and his family were flushed out of bed.
“I was woken up by strong flash lights and hushing sounds in my bedroom,” Koigi testified in court. After taking Koigi’s mobile phone, desktop computer, laptop and TV set among others things the robbers ordered him to get back into bed.
After a while, Koigi switched on the burglar alarm. Two police officers arrived at the scene moments later followed by the OCS and the OCPD.
The police traced their footprints to the home of the elderly Silas Maina who lived with his son in Thunguma village, where they recovered some of the stolen items.
However, Gikandi in his testimony, insisted that the attackers’ voices strongly indicated they were young men.
“Besides failing to investigate the son of the accused person and his whereabouts at the time of the attack, the police did not bother to interview the people that lived in their compound,” said Nyeri Resident Magistrate John Aringo, while discharging Maina.
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