Gory details of Kenyatta National Hospital patient’s murder laid bare

Kenyatta National Hospital’s Lily Koros, Manasseh Mugwang’a and Benard Githae when they appeared before Parliament’s Health Committee yesterday. [PHOTO: MOSES OMUSULA]

NAIROBI: Shocking details of how a cancer patient was stabbed 42 times and bludgeoned to death with an iron bar in his bed at Kenyatta National Hospital emerged at a parliamentary committee hearing.

The only witness to the murder was a 12-year-old patient who could neither hear, speak or write, members of the National Assembly Health Committee heard.

Fresh information provided to the committee showed that those who killed Cosmas Mutunga, a former procurement manager at Mada Hotels Limited, were a man and a woman.

The lawmakers were last week shown a postmortem report indicating that Mr Mutunga was badly battered, his skull broken, eyes gouged out and one of his legs shattered in a sad episode that exposed security lapses at the region's largest referral facility.

"He was killed under circumstances we are unable to explain. We have never denied that he was killed at the hospital. He was killed under unknown circumstances," said the hospital's Chief Executive Officer Lily Koros .

Mutunga's family now wants further investigations into the killing and compensation from the hospital for failing to protect their kin.

"The petitioner prays that the National Assembly causes an immediate investigation into the death of the late Cosmas Mutunga and ensures compensation for his family," read a petition from the family.

Mutunga, a father-of-four, was killed on November 29 last year, hours after his family visited him at the hospital and just days after they had donated blood to enable him undergo chemotherapy.

He was hit and stabbed 42 times in an act of violence that police are yet to unravel 10 months later. KNH failed to table before the committee an investigation report into the killing.

Despite the brutality of his murder and the extent of his injuries, Mutunga allegedly never shouted for help, and the staff on duty claimed they heard no commotion.

According to the committee members, Mutunga may have been sedated before being killed, and want further investigations into the staff on duty that night.

They took Ms Koros and the hospital's chief security officer, Manasseh Mugwanga, to task over why no administrative action was ever taken against the hospital staff on duty on the fateful day.

"It shows that the people who killed him were allowed in or they were workers. There are many things that don't add up. A blunt object is found, a patient is murdered, and the nurses are still working? Did you advise the management that some of the staff may have been suspects?" committee chair Rachel Nyamai (Kitui South) asked the security officer.

"Even if he didn't scream, the beatings would have been heard. The patient must have been near the nursing station," said James Nyikal (Seme).

"The postmortem report showed he was stabbed 42 times. This could be consistent with the idea that he was sedated so that the act could take place with little commotion," said John Munuve (Mwingi North).

"Considering the extent of his injuries, was he sedated?" posed Naomi Shaaban (Taveta).

The hospital's head of security said the 12-year-old boy, whom he described as "incoherent" used sign language to tell investigators that he had witnessed the murder. It is the boy who also pointed out the murder weapon, a metal rod supporting one of the shelves in the ward.

"From the little information that we got, he tried to explain that he saw the person who killed the victim. He confirmed that he was killed by somebody in that ward. He indicated it was a male and a female. He pointed at the bloodied metal bar," said the security officer, whom the committee declared a "hostile witness' for "hiding information" on the investigations.

Strangely, the hospital allowed the only witness to the murder to disappear into thin air, with no records of his whereabouts. The security officer also said he could not tell if the boy was ever fingerprinted.

Asked if any tests were ever conducted to find out if the patient was sedated, Koros said a pathologist was still conducting the tests.

"The pathologist is still investigating if there was sedation before the patient was killed," she said.