Police sex theory angers UK royals

Police Officer, Corporal Gideon Rono testifies before Migori Principal Magistrate Richard Odenyo during the ongoing inquest on the death of the late Alexander Monson at the Mombasa Court. [Photo by Kelvin Karani/Standard]

A policeman who attended an autopsy to determine what killed British aristocrat Alexander Monson yesterday advanced a novel theory.

Corporal Gideon Rono told court that the injuries detected in the back of the head and scrotum were, most likely, inflicted after a fall or violent sexual activity.

Rono’s testimony to the judicial inquest into the aristocrat’s death, alarmed a lawyer who described him as a “serial liar” advancing improbable hypotheses to conceal the actual cause of Monson’s death in police custody on May 19, 2012.

Rono’s claims prompted Alexander’s mother, Hillary, to walk out of the courtroom weeping.

He testified a day after a police photographer, who also witnessed the autopsy at Pandya Hospital mortuary in Mombasa, said he detected injuries to Alexander’s left elbow, back of the head and scrotum.

“I noticed some blood clot in the brain on the left side during the postmortem which made me to ask the pathologist what could have been the cause and he told me there were three theories; one was he could have fallen on the floor or pavement or could have hit his head on the wall,” said Rono.

Pathologist’s hint

He also claimed the pathologist told him that the injury on the scrotal sac could have been caused by an act of oral sex.

Rono who is now based in Embu was working in the Tourism Police Unit in Diani in 2012.

On wednesday, he was cross-examined by lawyers AB Olaba and Yusuf Abubakar who are representing the Monson family.

Abubakar accused Rono of fomenting lies to conceal the truth.

On Wednesday, Sergeant Stephen Namai, who is a scenes-of-crimes photographer, told Senior Principal Magistrate Richard Odenyo that he visited the mortuary to preserve the images of the corpse after it was moved from Palm Beach Hospital in Diani where Monson died chained to a bed. He died on May 19, hours after being arrested and detained at Diani Police Station.

The police claimed they arrested him for smoking marijuana in public and reports indicated he, suddenly fell ill in the police cells and was taken to hospital.

His father Lord Nicholas Monson claims the police invented a story suggesting the deceased abused drugs to defame him in death and conceal medical negligence as a cause of death.