Tale of reformed criminals who escaped death squads

After escaping death from hit squads suspected to have been deployed by the Kenya Police Service to exterminate them in Ongata Rongai, reformed criminals are still living in fear.

Many notorious muggers and robbers, said to be more than 40 by local human rights groups, were killed, forcing their accomplices into hiding in nearby estates.

Edwin Indire aka Edu, is a self-confessed former gangster who together with his former accomplices are finding their way back into society after life in crime. Edu has seen it all, escaping death by a whisker.

“Most of my friend’s have renounced crime and are asking for help to change their lives and go back to school,” he says.

Edu is lucky to be alive. Most of his friends were either lynched by mobs or killed in shootouts with the police.

Following the deaths of many of his close friends with whom he had been terrorising Rongai residents for more than six years, he the 20-year-old is eager to go back to school so he can eke out a decent living.

It took a hail of bullets sometimes last year to make him change his ways. In 2016, a special unit of the police embarked on an operation to rid Ongata Rongai of criminals.

As he narrates what happened, he subconsciously rubs his hands over his body as if to confirm that he indeed he does not have any bullet wounds. The events of that day are still fresh in his mind. He was walking around Ongata Rongai’s Kware area with three of his friends when they noticed an unmarked police car ahead of them.

“We did not know that police were right behind us and that they also had our photographs. I was carrying a bag full of goods and a friend was carrying a duck we had just stolen. Then I noticed an unmarked police car in a distance and before I knew it, a neighbour whom I later found out was a police informer and three men emerged from a building,” he says.

“When I tried to run back, I was confronted by two other men. One drew out his pistol and cocked it, before ordering the four of us to lie down. He fired in the air once as we all lied down.”

Lucky escape

A crowd had milled around the scene. His mother was among them, watching in shock as a police officer held a gun to his son’s head. Edu says he was determined not to go to jail at any cost, and when the policeman holding a gun on him received a call, he made a daring escape. He jumped up and sprinted for dear life as the police officer fired several shots at him, missing each time.

“I don’t know how, but I kept running in a zigzag line as he fired. Miraculously, no bullet hit me. I kept running and changed direction when I came to a dead end. The road was clear and I just ran expecting to be hit,” he narrates.

He hid in some bushes for five hours as police hunted him down. His younger brother was arrested in the swoop but was released without charge. His three accomplices are at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison serving time for robbery.

Edu escaped first to Mombasa and later to Kibera slums where he hid for 11 months before returning to Ongata Rongai where he has joined Crime Si Poa, a group that discourages youth from crime. The group’s Ongata Rongai branch officials Raphael Ochieng, Halima Guyo and Dickson Mwaura convinced him to denounce his criminal ways.

Edu was presented to Ongata Rongai OCPD Mutiga Ringera and his deputy Simon Kimuyu. He denounced his criminal past and is now helping the law enforcers fight crime.

“Some of the known criminals have reformed and are part of Ongata Rongai’s community policing. They are the reason Rongai does  feature as a crime prone area anymore. People had been moving out of Ongata Rongai because of crime incidents but its has since changed thanks to cooperation with the community,” Ringera says.

Crime Si Poa has been invited to Nairobi Chapel for a talk and will also be holding a crime awareness campaign in Ongata Rongai’s Kware and Kisumu Ndogo slums to sensitise youth on the effects of life in crime. And they have every reason to. Twelve youth from the area are currently held at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison either serving sentences or awaiting judgement for various crime.

The friends Edu left behind when he escaped are now also at Kamiti. His other friends Anto and Jamal were found dead, their bodies riddled with bullets and their eyes gorged out in Ngong forest.

Many more youth from the area, including Mose aka Lampard (because of his football prowess), Moha, Elijah, Ngaruya, Niko, Edu Sexy, Peter Olondi, Kanao, Papa and Mamba had been killed in crime. Moha, a mechanic who had moved from Eastleigh to Ongata Rongai was shot dead along Industrial Area’s Enterprise Road in 2016 where he had been lured.

Mob justice

Edu says he was introduced into crime at the age of 14 and began with simple burglaries with his friend Mamba.

“We always admired some of our colleagues like Mose and Nagaruiya whom everyone recognised and seemed to respect. I wanted to be like them,” Edu recalls of dreaded gangsters killed by police.

But as a novice in crime, he would only get a pittance of the loot even as they graduated to mugging pedestrians.

It was only until he was arrested and taken to the police station during a botched mugging that he earned respect for not revealing his partners.

Then there was a time when he and his accomplices Aleso and Smarta stole electronics from a house as a birthday party was ongoing. An alarm was raised and although he managed to escape, his accomplices were caught up and lynched.

Aleso was subjected to mob justice and mentioned Edu’s name but died before he could point out his friend’s home.

Police deny engaging in extra-judicial killings to rid Ongata Rongai of the gangs.

“All I know is that crime and robbery incidents have reduced since police and the community started cooperating,” Ringera says.