US jails Kenyan for life over son’s death

By John Oywa

A Kenyan father has been handed life imprisonment in the United States for killing his son.

Mr Gideon Omondi was found guilty of killing Ritchie, 4, by holding him under water for five minutes following differences with his wife Hellen Omondi in 2006.

Omondi, 36, who was studying engineering in Santa Ana, was convicted of first-degree murder by Superior Court Judge William R Froeberg, according to Orange County Register website.

In what the judge described as the maximum allowable term, the judge also handed Omondi a further 25 years for attempting to kill himself alongside his son in January 2006. He had doused himself in gasoline.

Gideon Omondi: Jailed in US for killing son

According to the court, Omondi, who lived at Manyatta estate in Kisumu before going to the US ten years ago, had a row with his estranged wife over the son’s custody.

"In a tearful victim-impact statement prior to sentencing, Hellen said she was heart-broken over the loss of her son," the website said. "The pain I will take to my grave. I will never forgive him," the website quoted her.

Made confession

Deputy District Attorney Steve McGreevy argued Omondi planned the killing because he felt he would lose custody of Ritchie. He said Omondi demonstrated he knew what he was doing was wrong because he immediately drove to the Fullerton Police Station and confessed.

Fullerton officers visited an apartment Omondi shared with his brother and found the boy’s body tucked in his father’s bed.

Deputy Public Defender Mark Brown argued Omondi, a graduate student in engineering at Cal State Fullerton, was legally insane with a major depressive mental disorder and did not understand the act was morally wrong.

A psychiatrist hired by the defence testified that Omondi was suicidal and angry and paranoid about the family law system.

But court-appointed psychologist testified Omondi knew what he was doing and that he understood it was legally and morally wrong. The jury deliberated for three hours before finding Omondi legally sane at the time. Yesterday, the news of Omondi’s imprisonment shocked relatives and friends in Kisumu.

"It is shocking. I can’t imagine our friend spending all his life in a foreign prison," said Martin Oloo, a former schoolmates who read the news in the Internet. Omondi’s father could not be reached for comment.

Separately, a Kenyan was found dead in his apartment in Finlay, Ohio last Friday.

Mr Francis Peter Mungao, 37, was living alone in Finlay, according to mwakilishi.com, a website run by Kenyans in the US.