How banker escaped death by the skin of his teeth

By PAUL WAFULA

KENYA: On Tuesday, January 22 at about 9.30pm Edward Maina Nguchuga drove home after a long day’s work.

When he arrived, he chatted briefly with the two watchmen stationed at the gate.

Then the 49-year-old Information Technology specialist with a local bank strode into his Nkoroi home in Kajiado County. He was about to turn the door-knob to his bedroom when he suddenly changed his mind and headed to the kitchen.

Eerily, Maina’s sixth sense warned him that there was someone behind him.

But it was too late. At lightning speed, a heavily built man pounced in the dimly lit corridor and stabbed him. The knife sliced through his neck and got stuck somewhere in his mouth, in the lower teeth. The pain was excruciating.

The attacker plucked out the knife and Maina fell to the floor in a heap. But the attacker was not done with him yet. He stabbed him again and again and with each stab, Maina screamed in anguish.

 Maina wondered just who his attacker was. He gathered his courage, scanned around and realised that the attacker was alone. “I struggled with him, asking him: Why do you want to kill me?” He did not respond. “I could not see his face, he was wearing a hood. I could see his eyes and the sharp knife,” Maina recalls.

He continued with his attacks. After several misses, the attacker pierced a vein in his neck.  Maina sure of one thing, he was at death’s door.

Maina, however, decided he was not going to die without putting up a fight. “I don’t know how I mustered the strength, but I managed to raise him up and banged him on the door,” Maina revealed. The attacker landed on the floor with a thud, the hood came off and for the first time Maina caught a glimpse of his face. 

It was his former security officer, Boniface Ateka Ongara. He had worked for him for two years and quit with ambitions to work for a bigger security firm. He had certainly moved up the ladder from watchman to a murderer.

Startling discovery

“I employed him as a watchman in 2011. Now he was in my house trying to kill me,” says Maina. Maina reached for his neck and pulled out the knife stuck in his body. When he put the knife in his right hand, he made a startling discovery: He had lost a finger.

“Ateka tried to come after me twice but when he saw the knife in my hand, he retreated. He entered the kitchen looking for something. He found nothing, my wife had cleaned up the house when she moved out,” Maina added.

Ateka grabbed a bunch of keys on the kitchen table trying to open the door, none worked.”  He shouted at me asking for the key which was in my pocket.  I just threw it at him and he opened and ran out.”

The attacker fled leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints. But equally puzzling is that despite the brutal struggle, the two watchmen at the gate did not hear or see any evil.

Maina struggled out of the house and dragged himself towards the gate where he collapsed. Pitch darkness. He woke up in a hospital bed at Ongata Rongai’s women hospital. 

Just how did he get here?

Maina met his future wife, Damaris Wambui, at the bank where he still works in 2000. He was in IT. She was working as a bank clerk. It was not until 2002 that they started living as man and wife. Maina has worked for the bank for the last 18 years.

Their marriage had been quiet. They were blessed with two children. They had two more from Maina’s previous marriage. All was going well until the last five years when disagreements arose.

“The biggest disagreement that eventually broke us apart was over a parcel of land I bought in Nkoroi. My wife received the title deed on my behalf and claimed to have deposited it with a bank in a safe deposit box. She was hesitant to let me see it,” he recalls.

Today, conservative estimates value it at Sh1.2 million. Later in 2010, he bought a second piece of land near the same location for commercial purposes. Maina and his wife disagreed on plans to construct commercial units and later Maina resisted a proposal to co-own the project with his wife.