From blood trail, shattered window and drugs: Inside Maxine Wahome and Asad Khan's deadly fight

 

Rally drivers the late Asad Khan and Maxine Wahome. [File, Standard]

Blood on the stairs, living room floor and balcony door, a shattered window, a penknife, whiskey, tobacco, drugs, packed bags in the corridor, and a shaky video of a young rally star sobbing into her phone: “Daddy, he cut himself. He kicked the window pane. I was the one who was beaten up.”

Those were some of the haunting evidential images and sounds laid bare before the High Court in Nairobi as investigating officer Police Corporal Diana Angote and digital forensics expert Timothy Nyande walked the court, step by step, through the last known moments of Safari Rally driver Asad Khan with his girlfriend, Maxine Wahome.

Maxine, then also a star rally driver, is charged with murdering Asad at their Kileleshwa apartment on December 12, 2022, allegedly by inflicting serious injuries on his leg, from which he later died at the city’s Avenue Hospital.

What unfolded in court was a detailed reconstruction of an 18-month private relationship that ended in tragedy. 

Over five hours, lead investigator Angote told Justice Lilian Mutende that she was on duty at Kilimani Police Station when she was alerted to an incident at Preston Court, Kileleshwa.

READ: Asad Khan might have died due to excessive bleeding on leg, court told

“It was around noon when we received a call that there had been an incident in Kileleshwa, specifically at Preston Court,” she recounted.

Angote left the station with four colleagues. At the compound gate, security guards directed them to Block D.

“When we arrived at the gate, that is the Preston Court, we met the security guards who told us that there had been a fight at House Number Three, Block D. The owners of the house were Mr Asad and his girlfriend, Maxine. That is what they told us,” she testified.

The late Rally driver Asad Khan. [File, Standard]

One guard, Hassan Oyugi, told the officers that noise from the couple’s house began around 8:30am.

“He said he heard shouting and screaming from House Number Three, Block D. He tried to stop them, but they continued and ignored his pleas,” Angote narrated.

About half an hour later, Oyugi saw Asad leaving the apartment, visibly injured and bleeding.

"Minutes later, he saw Asad leave the apartment bleeding. He called for assistance and emergency, and they rushed him to Nairobi Hospital,” she said.

As the officers climbed toward House D3, the blood was impossible to miss.

“While we were proceeding to the house, at the staircases to the house, there was blood all over the staircases,” she told the court. “But there was much more blood in the second staircase, much more volume than the other ones.”

Inside the house, the door was open. In the living room, Angote found Maxine, her parents, and a police officer from Kileleshwa.

“There was also blood in the sitting room area, dining area, and also the door to the balcony,” she told the court.

Angote described a disorganised house as she painted the picture of chairs shifted, carpet missing, items removed from the dining table and packed bags lying in the corridor.

“There were some belongings in bags that had already been packed in the corridors. We didn’t count; there were many bags,” she testified.

When she was asked whose bags these were by the prosecutor, she said that Maxine’s father answered that they were Maxine’s.

To Angote, the overall state of the house suggested interference before police arrived.

ALSO READ: Fresh details emerge of Maxine Wahome, Asad Khan tragic love story

“The scene of the crime may have been interfered with as I found the house disorganised and the parents of the accused already inside.” 

The officer informed the court that she first sought an explanation from Maxine’s father of what had happened.

“He told me that he got a call from his daughter… ‘she told him that his boyfriend had gotten violent and he had injured himself in the process,” said Angote.

She then turned to Maxine for her version of events.  In her response, Maxine, she said, claimed that Asad became violent and wanted to beat her.

Maxine Wahome is the prime suspect in the murder of rally driver Asad Khan. [File, Standard]

According to Maxine, she ran to the balcony near the kitchen and locked the door.

“That’s when the boyfriend decided to knock on the balcony door where she had locked herself,” Angote recounted. “But Maxine says his boyfriend didn’t open the door.”

Maxine claimed Asad asked for keys.

“She told me she thought he was asking for keys to enable him to open the door where she was hiding.”

After some silence, Maxine said she peeped out, and she didn’t see the boyfriend.

“She saw volumes of blood. That’s why she panicked, opened the door and ran straight to the bedroom. She stayed there, she called the father and also started packing.”

Balcony

By then, Asad had already been rushed to the hospital.

During the brief interrogation, Angote told the court that the scenes of crime scene officers were called. 

“At that juncture, I called the Scenes of Crime officers who came and processed the scene and collected various exhibits,” Angote said.

She described broken glass around the dining area and the balcony door.

“There were some broken windows, window panes. One of the windows was near the dining table,” she testified, referring to photographs produced in court.

“There were two others broken. But those ones were from the door to the balcony.”

Photos also showed blood under the dining table, a trail of blood across the living room and blood outside the balcony.

Beyond the blood and broken glass, Angote told the court that several other items were recovered from the lovers’ house and forwarded for analysis.

“At the house, we also recovered a whiskey glass with a brown dry residue, two Jameson whiskey bottles, a whiskey glass with dry alcohol, a white plastic cup branded yatta,” she said.

“There were also sachets of Mirage Blue tobacco containing an unknown substance, a dry plant material wrapped in newspaper, an empty bottle of Tanqueray Sevilla… a blister pack labelled “choline’ containing eight tablets, and two were used,” she testified.

“Another blister pack labelled ‘Glucophage’ containing three tablets and another blister pack containing five tablets labelled VASC.”

Rally driver Maxine Wahome at Milimani law courts on December 13, 2022. [File, Standard]

The exhibits were sent to the Government Chemist to ascertain if they contained toxic substances and whether they had effects on human health.

At the house, the officer revealed that they conducted an intensive search for a possible murder weapon, and they only recovered one small knife.

“We just found a knife… it had no blood… I think it’s a penknife it was at the dining table,” she said. No other weapon was recovered.” 

Angote told the court that despite searching the house thoroughly, her team did not find any weapon in the house that would have led to that injury on Asad’s leg.

Asked about the condition of the accused when police arrested her, Angote was categorical: “The day of the incident, when we removed Maxine from the house, she was generally okay and had no injuries at all.” 

After Maxine’s arrest, Angote visited Asad at Nairobi Hospital.

“He was in the ICU section and had one visible injury on the leg with a bandage. Since we could not talk to him, and were not allowed by the doctors to stay there more than five minutes, we just looked at him and left,” she recalled. 

At that time, Justice Mutende heard that investigators were pursuing a lesser charge of grievous harm against Maxine rather than murder since Asad was alive. 

A few days later, she said, the case took a decisive turn.

“The brother, Adil Khan, called us to say that the patient was no more,” she said.

“I personally went to Avenue Hospital to verify… he had passed on December 18, 2022.”

Following the death of her boyfriend, the charge against Maxine was substituted with murder.

“We organised an autopsy to be done, which was done in the presence of all parties, our police officers, the accused person and accused's relatives,” said Angote.

A postmortem report by pathologist Peter Ndegwa showed the death was as a result of injuries caused by a sharp force trauma, confirming earlier findings of a deep ankle wound.

Angote submitted multiple samples for analysis from Asad’s stomach, kidney, liver, bile, clothe, and a buccal swab from Maxine.

The Government Chemist report disclosed that Asad’s stomach contained ketamine, a narcotic that causes hallucinogenic effects when abused. 

It also suggested he had mixed trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA), a designer psychedelic stimulant, with Jameson whisky (40 per cent ethanol) he had been consuming at his residence.

While Angote reconstructed the physical scene, Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) digital forensics expert Timothy Nyande focused on the digital trail left on Maxine’s phone.

ALSO READ: Court examines call logs, videos in Maxine Wahome murder case

“The videos, images and call logs… were retrieved from an iPhone belonging to the accused,” he said.

Maxine Wahome before Lady Justice Lillian Mutende where she ask the court to grant her bond . The 25 year old rally driver was charged with murder of her boyfriend Asad Khan. [Collins Kweyu, Standard]

From 76,000 pages of extraction, he prepared a 22-page report containing selected videos, images and call logs showing details of the incident.

Legal battle

The court was then played a key video clip extracted from the phone, which showed a distress call from a woman believed to be Maxine, speaking to her father and officers outside the grilled door.

Nyande described what was visible in the clip: “The video shows blood on the grill of the door and on the floor, with two police officers standing outside as Maxine calls her father and refuses to open the door.” 

Nyande presented various photos, including one showing Asad leaving the apartment visibly bleeding.  

He also produced call logs, including a 9:11am WhatsApp call between Maxine and her mother, Beverly Wahome, lasting nine minutes and 43 seconds.

Nyande further testified that Maxine had saved Asad’s contact in her phone as “My Samurai.”

He also took the court through various messages between the two lovers that referenced alcohol.

For 18 months, Maxine and Asad lived together in Kileleshwa, sharing their passion for motorsport and navigating the pressures of sponsorships and competition. 

Asad not only provided mechanical expertise but also helped Maxine navigate the sport’s often unforgiving sponsorship terrain.

Families who once celebrated victories together now sit on opposite ends of a courtroom, watching a love story unravel into a legal battle.