Police on the spot over probe into murder of shooting survivor

A ward at Mwingi General Hospital. A patient admitted with gunshot injuries was later killed by an unknown assailant. (PHOTO: FILE)

Police investigations into the cold-blooded killing of a patient in his Mwingi hospital bed has come under the spotlight following new threats against a woman who witnessed the brazen attack.

Sharlyne Malia, sister of the 27-year-old hawker who was murdered in a Mwingi hospital ward by men who had earlier dumped him on a highway with bullet wounds, fears that her brother’s killers are now after her.

Malia witnessed the point-blank shooting of Frederick Musyimi last Thursday, as he lay in a ward bed at Mwingi Level Four Hospital – only hours after he had been shot and abandoned by gunmen who thought he was dead.

She was sitting by her wounded brother in the hospital’s Surgical Ward when a man walked in at 2am and emptied seven bullets into the helpless patient – clearly determined to complete the killing which Musyimi had miraculously survived.

Yesterday, a terrified Malia told of suspicious phone calls from a man who had introduced himself as a policeman and took a statement from her at Mwingi Hospital after the gun attack.

The calls came after she had narrowly escaped being seized at a family gathering by four men, one of whom she recognised as the gunman who had sprayed bullets into her brother in hospital and the other as his companion who had stood guard at the door.

Musyimi’s killing at a county facility which should have tight security was executed by two men wearing heavy jackets, who came to the hospital a few hours after he had been brought by two policemen.

Musyimi was on Thursday discovered weak and bathed in blood on the desolate Mwingi-Garisaa Highway by a boda boda after he had dragged himself from the bush. He had been tossed out of a white vehicle and shot repeatedly by men who had abducted him from his home in Majengo, Mwingi at 8am.

The killers drove 120 kilometres to Soma Soma junction on the Garissa Highway with their intended victim. They then pushed him out of the car, shot him in the head, left cheek and left ribs and drove away, thinking he was dead.

Musyimi regained consciousness and crawled to the Mwingi-Garissa Highway, where good Samaritans, led by a boda boda, took him to to Ukasi dispensary. Local police officers ferried him to Mwingi hospital, 50km away.

One hour after his admission at around 7pm, two men pretending to be visitors tried to enter his ward but were rebuffed by the watchmen. They hang around the hospital compound and forced their way into the hospital at 2am, opening fire on the Musyimi, who was on a drip, as his horrified sister, Malia, watched.

It seems the killers now want to eliminate Malia, one of the witnesses to the killing, and the boda boda man who first found Musyimi by the road. The two men with heavy jackets, whom Malia says she can clearly recognize, were in a gang of four who on Friday walked into a dowry ceremony at Malia’s village in Ukasi and moved around peering at faces, clearly looking for someone who had been described to them.

“You could clearly see they were not part of the visitors. No one seemed to know them,” a witness told The Standard on Sunday. “They were either speaking on phone or texting.”

Strange visitors

Malia was away at a cousin’s home, but quickly returned when she received calls from a neighbour that there were strangers walking around their family compound.

Relatives who were present told The Standard on Sunday that when the four men walked in, they positioned themselves strategically. One stood at the entrance, the other went to the back of the house, a third stood at the edge of the family shamba while the fourth moved around greeting people.

Just then Sharlyne’s brothers walked into the compound shouting out her name and asking her to come out from wherever she was.

“I sensed something was not right. So I peeped outside and instantly recognised two of the people that had been at the hospital posing as police officers after my brother was killed,” Sharlyne said

Musyimi had told his sister in hospital, shortly before he was killed, that the men who abducted him had introduced themselves as police officers. When they appeared at the hospital again, he instantly recognized them, and shouted to his sister that the men pretending to be policemen who had shot him “ are here and they have now come to finish me”.

A number of questions arise:

• Why have Mwingi police, in whose jurisdiction the killing occurred, not summoned Malia to the local station and taken a statement from her?

• Why did the two policemen who handed Musyimi over to Mwingi Level Four Hospital leave behind a man with bullet wounds without placing him under guard?

• How did Musyimi’s abductors find out that he had survived and had been admitted to Mwingi hospital?

• We asked the Independent Police Authority (IPOA) yesterday whether they could give witness protection to Malia. They said nothing could be done for her until Monday, when their staff return to work. Why don’t they have an emergency service?

Yesterday at around 11am, Malia received a call from a man alleging to be a CID officer from Machakos County informing her of “developments” in the case of her brother’s killing.

“The caller said that there had been developments in the case and that two people who were CID officers based in Mwingi had been arrested over the killing,” Sharlyne told The Standard on Sunday. “He said he wanted me to go and identify the suspects. He didn’t say where the identification was to happen but insisted that we agree on a meeting place and he would come get me.”

The caller also asked her not to mention their discussions on the new developments to anyone.

“I was suspicious and mentioned it to my family. I told him I couldn’t meet him.”

About an hour later, the caller became insistent.

“He started texting and asking where I was and that we wouldn’t have to go far for the identification. He also said that he would be in a position to fast track my brother’s postmortem from Thursday to Monday next week to speed up the case,” she said.

The caller also asked for the telephone number of the boda boda man who rescued Musyimi on the day he was shot.

According to neighbours, Musyimi, a school dropout, worked during the day as a hawker but had had brushes with the law, which raised eyebrows. He and his brother Maluki were chased by police last July after being accused of shop break-ins at Kathiani.

And between March and April this year, Musyimi was admitted to Mwingi Hospital with unexplained stab wounds. He escaped from the ward rather than wait to be discharged.

Another relative told the media that only last week, he noticed Musyimi’s ear had a wound which he said came from a police bullet.

The Standard on Sunday yesterday reached out to the Charles Owino, the Police Spokesperson for direction on the case. Owino referred the case of the visibly shaken Sharlyne to IPOA chairman Macharia Njeru, who said his office would only be of assistance on Monday morning since his staff were off duty during the weekend.