Police arrest woman accused of strangling and dumping baby into a river

Police have arrested a woman suspected to have strangled her five-year-old child at Kimandi village, Inoe Ward in Kirinyaga Central Sub-County.

According to area residents, the 23-year-old single mother threw the body of the child into Rutui River after the alleged strangulation and kept silent over the matter hoping the corpse would be swept away by the flooded river.

The suspect’s relatives on failing to see the boy within the homestead on Friday, started to question the mother who allegedly replied she was equally surprised by the absence of her son.

The body was however discovered floating in the river at about 8.30 am Saturday morning by a passerby who immediately raised an alarm.

Residents from the village who had gotten wind of the missing boy then rushed to the scene and identified the dead child as the missing son of the suspect.

“We then called in the police from the nearby Kerugoya police station who retrieved the body and arrested the suspect who was still amongst the crowd that had milled around the scene,” said Alice Njoki an eyewitness

Kirinyaga Central OCPD Yaya Chome said the body of the child was taken to the County Funeral Home at the Kerugoya Level Four Hospital for a postmortem examination.

“We have placed in custody the mother who is as at now the prime suspect over the murder and she will be arraigned in court over the incident,’’ the officer said.

The incident comes in the wake of yet another related case where a single mother allegedly poisoned packed lunch for her five-year-old son at Kagongo village, Kirinyaga East Sub-County early this year.

The mother has since been charged in court with attempted murder and her case is still pending at the Kerugoya Law Court where she denied the charges.