Man stabs wife to death over ugali as children watch

Neighbours at the scene where 23-year-old Viola Awuor was stabbed to death by her husband Patrick Odhiambo who complained he had been served a small portion of ugali. [Willis Awandu, Standard]

Neighbours have described the horror two children had to witness when their father stabbed their mother to death after being served a small portion of ugali in Ruaraka’s Laundry Slums, Nairobi. The man, Patrick Odundo Adera, complained about the “small” portion that he had to share with the children.

They then went to bed, but the 23-year-old victim, identified as Viola Awuor Odhiambo, chose to sleep with the children on a mattress on the floor.

Adera called her to come up to the bed, but they continued quarrelling. He then stepped outside, saying he had gone to the toilet.

He came back with a knife on his waist. The woman had locked the door from inside and had fallen asleep. One of the children opened the door for him.

He dashed in and started stabbing the wife.

“When he entered the house, he started stabbing the wife. She called on one of the children to grab the knife from his father, but the knife fell down. When the child went to pick it up, the man kicked him. The child sustained an injury on his elbow,” said Lucy Wambui, a neighbour who was woken up by the children screaming by the roadside.

“He took the knife, finished her and escaped,” she said.

The couple’s two children estimated to be between nine and six years screamed and banged on neighbour’s mabati walls to alert them of the gruesome act.

“The children stepped out of the house at 3am (Tuesday) screaming that their mother had been stabbed with a knife by their father,” said Wambui.

She says she accompanied the children back to the house and even met the father who was running away but she was not aware exactly what had happened.

She found the door open with the woman lying on floor with stab wounds on the face, neck and back. The knife was still on the bloodied bed.

Neighbours also say that he man had run after the child who went out to alert neighbours asking if he was “mad.”

Wambui alerted the other neighbours and called in the police who came, photographed the scene and took the body to the mortuary. She says that the children recounted what had happened to them.

Dry blood was still visible on the door step when The Standard visited the crime scene.

Cecilia Wangechi, the couple’s immediate neighbour, said that they had only stayed at the house that night, having moved in on Sunday and it was hard to get a complete profile of the man.

Ann Wanjiru Kimani, the couple’s former tenant, said in her 42-year stay in the slums, she had never seen such brutality.

She said the man used to be “pushed” to pay rent.

According to her, the couple had separated when they lived in her plot but reunited when they moved to another plot in the slum.

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