Kisumu boy accused of killing roommate at rehab centre in fight over TV remote control

Police in Kisumu are holding a street boy who stubbed to death a colleague at a rehabilitation center.

The two have been staying at St Phillip Street Children Rehabilitation Centre. They are said to have differed over a TV remote control.

Witness Dennis Menya, a shopkeeper in the neighbourhood, said he heard a voice shouting "utaniumiza" (you will hurt me).

“The next thing I heard was a sharp cry. When I got out of my shop, someone was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, and people were shouting at the fleeing boy who was caught by residents,” he said.

It turned out to be one of the street boys in the rehabilitation centre had been attacked.

Menya called the police and an ambulance, who arrived to find the boy dead.

“We had just came from church and we were watching a musical programme when one of them walked in. The other had the remote and they started fighting over it. One left and the other followed him immediately. We then heard that one had been stabbed,” said Michael Shikuku, a worker at the centre.

According to their colleagues, the two had been fighting for some time and often threatened to kill each other.

The deceased joined the rehabilitation centre early last year.  He wanted to go to school and was attending Lutheran adult school, while the suspect had just left remand prison two months earlier.

“Their fights prompted the organisation to rent the two a room because they were affecting the others. But the cause of the confrontation could have been an accumulation of anger since they stay together and almost always argue," said Vincent Ochieng, one of the initiators of the project.

Confirming the incident, OCPD Ancent Kaloki said the deceased succumbed to two stab wounds on the chest. The suspect is being held at Central police station and will be arraigned in court on Monday.

According to Ochieng, the attacker ran away from home because of a taboo. His mother, a kalenjin, had re-married a Luhya man.

“His mother had to pay a fine of a cow when the boy participated in a circumcision dance. According to the elders, this was a taboo,” said Ochieng.

When the discrimination got too much, the boy ran away from home and had been in the streets until the rehabilitation took him in.

The only known relative of the killed boy is his grandmother who lives in Muhanda.