Florence Nyagah: Six months on, family waits for justice after murder

Six months after the burial, the earth has settled. For the family of Florence Nyagah, nothing has. The hair beautician’s death still hangs over them like dust that refuses to clear, thick, choking and impossible to escape.

Nyagah was 43, a lively, social woman who worked as a hairdresser in Nairobi’s CBD. On 27 February, she was allegedly stabbed to death inside the home she shared with Daniel Mburu Macharia along Lumumba Drive in Kasarani.

Mburu, who is accused of Nyagah’s killing and is before the court, was the man she had lived with for nine years, the man she turned to for protection. He was a senior officer in the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ Anti-Narcotics Unit.

Their relationship, like many, had its storms. Arguments came and went, but somehow they always found their way back to each other. On the Friday evening before her death, however, that familiar pattern broke.

Nyagah video-called her daughter, Michel Zinza. She looked frightened and heartbroken. She said she and Mburu were having a disagreement and that things were not looking good for her. Moments later, Mburu appeared on the screen, calm and assuring the daughter that everything would be sorted out. The call ended.

Zinza tried calling again and again, but there was no answer. When she finally reached Mburu, he told her not to call because they were only having a small misunderstanding.

Worried, Zinza contacted her mother’s identical twin sister, Hellen Nyaga. Hellen, accompanied by her husband, went to the apartment. The door was slightly ajar. Inside, a body lay covered with a cloth, its feet exposed.

It was Florence. They ran outside screaming attracting neighbours. Her body had four deep stab wounds to the chest and another to her forehead.

Hellen still struggles to speak about that day without her voice breaking. “We grew up as two bodies with one soul,” she says, adding; “She was my mirror, my confidante, the person I ran to with every secret, the safest place I knew. Now she is gone, fatally stabbed by the man she trusted most.”

Sleep no longer comes easily. Some nights, Hellen dreams that her sister comes to her and says she suffered a lot. She wakes up cold and devastated. Passing the apartment still stops her in her tracks.

Yet she clings to the belief that her sister’s light cannot be extinguished. “I believe justice will prevail.”

For Zinza, the loss is equally relentless. She has become a pillar for her younger brother and her one-year-old child. “I have to stay strong for them,” she says. “I am trying to be a mother and a sister while carrying the weight of my mother’s death and this case.”

Fear, she says, has become a constant companion. She is always looking over her shoulder, especially after Mburu was released before being formally charged.

As a key witness, Zinza is repeatedly forced to relive the discovery of her mother’s body. On May 25, she says, she saw Mburu approach her within the court precincts, but walked away without hearing what he wanted. “I still cannot understand how a man accused of causing my mother’s death could walk up to me so freely.”

Members of Mburu’s family have also tried to contact her, something she finds distressing. “They act as if this is something that can simply be talked away. For me, it is not. I lost my mother. I carry the consequences every single day.”

Prosecution counsel Gloria Amondi confirmed before Makadara Chief Magistrate Kennedy Bidali that there had been attempts to interfere with witnesses and that the matter had been reported at Kasarani Police Station. “I keep the nightmares, the duty of being a witness and the responsibility of holding a young family together while I myself am still breaking apart. We need empathy,” Zinza says.

The killing was reported  at Kasarani Police Station. Crime-scene investigators found signs of a disturbance, blood near the door and frame, and a bloodstained knife without a handle, believed to be the murder weapon.

A post-mortem examination at Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital established the cause of death as penetrating sharp-force trauma to the chest.

Mburu surrendered at Naivasha Police Station on March 3, four days after he was last seen with Florence. He appeared mentally disturbed and had a stitched wound on his forehead.

He was charged with manslaughter and granted Mburu cash bail of Sh1.8 million or an alternative bond of Sh5 million pending trial.

For Hellen and Zinza, the courtroom is where they have pinned their hopes for justice.