Three people die mysteriously in separate incidents

Senior police officers led by Western region DCI David Cheruiyot addresses press at Kakamega police headquarters on August 10, 2018. [Benjamin Sakwa, Standard]

A woman and two children have died mysteriously in Kakamega County in separate incidents. One child is aged four and the other three months.

In the first incident,  today sand harvesters stumbled across the the body of the woman in her early 40s at the bank of River Yala near Iguhu Bridge along the Kakamega – Kisumu highway.

Jackson Onyango, a sand harvester, said they went to harvest sand around 7.00am and upon reaching the site, they saw a coffin at the river bank.

Mr Onyango said they alerted the police who came after a half an hour.

“When the coffin was opened, a rotting body of a middle-aged woman was inside with the head and legs chopped off,” said Onyango.

Onyango said they suspected that the woman might have been killed elsewhere and her body dumped at the river "We will be forced to conduct rituals to cleanse the scene of crime so that calamity does not befall our families,” Onyango said.

The body was taken to Kakamega Teaching and Referral hospital  for autopsy.

In the second incident at Butenje village in Navakholo constituency, two children died in a fire razed down their house down Tuesday morning.

The cause of the fire  was not  established.

According to their father, Paul Mumia, he had breakfast around 7.30am and left for the shamba to harvest maize before the children could wake up.

Mumia said after 20 minutes later, he saw a huge smoke coming out of his house.

“I found when fire had spread in all corners of the house and when I tried to get inside to rescue my children, I was overpowered by the fire and fell at the door. I screamed for help and neighbours came to rescue me,” said Mumia.

According to Mumia, they tried to put out the fire by pouring water in house in a bid to save his children who were still inside.

“No one dared to enter into the house to save my children. After ten minutes, I went inside and rescued one of them. I went for the second one and at this time, fire almost overpowered me and survived with burns on my head. They died a few minutes later,” said Mumia.

Western region Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) David Cheruiyot said in the first incident, preliminary investigations show that the woman was killed elsewhere and his body dumped at the river.

Mr Cheruiyot said they have taken her finger prints to the police headquarters in Nairobi to establish her identity and urged members of the public  to give information to the police so that her family members can be informed.