Officers who shot woman dead at City Park disarmed

Identities of the police officers has been released and they have since been disarmed. [Courtesy]

Four police officers have been disarmed following the killing of a woman in a case of mistaken identity at the City Park in Parklands area, Nairobi.

Their rifles were taken for ballistic tests to establish which one fired the bullets that killed Janet Wangui Waiyaki, 41.  Wangui’s companion, Bernard Chege, 26, was also shot and wounded in the Sunday morning incident. He is in hospital.

Even though two of the officers fired from their AK47 rifles, the other colleagues were disarmed and their weapons taken for tests as investigation into the killing got underway.

One of the officers fired four bullets and the other seven. The officers had apparently come from Industrial Area command to Parklands area where the incident happened. It is not clear what mission they had there given it is not their jurisdiction.

The woman and man were resting in a private car within the park when police on patrol approached it.

According to police and witnesses at the park, the car had been parked there for more than an hour raising suspicion. The shooting happened at about 10 am.

Nairobi police boss Joseph Ole Tito said the officers approached the car with an intention of knowing if there were occupants and their mission.

“The car’s windows were tinted and as the officers approached it and knocked it, the driver sped off prompting one of the officers to shoot at it. Both occupants were injured but the woman succumbed in the hospital,” he said.

After the car stalled few meters away the two occupants were removed and taken to the hospital where the woman died while being attended to. Before she died, she informed police and the hospital attendants who her relatives were and were called there.

Tito said they had launched investigations into the incident even as the families of the man and woman complained police had acted with eagerness to shoot.

Tito said the officers did not want to “take chances in this era of many crimes including terrorism”.

“We will investigate the matter professionally if there are complaints,” he said.

The incident has drawn criticism from Kenyans online who called for justice