This archive report was first published on 23 August 2020.
On April 11, 2020, a milk firm manager, Charles Murimi, and his 13-year-old daughter, Valery Njeri, were brutally murdered in their sleep at their Kioru village home in Kirinyaga County. The prime suspect in the gruesome killing is Naomi Wanjiku, a court clerk at Karatina Law Courts, who was accused of the double homicide of her husband and daughter as well as attempting to kill her son.
Naomi Wanjiku allegedly attacked her husband and daughter with a blunt object, then proceeded to her son's house, where she asked him to open the door. Her son, Felix Njine, a first-year university student, managed to duck and restrain her after she vowed to kill her entire family and tried to attack him.
Just a week later, on April 17, a 30-year-old woman, Jane Wawira, was killed and her body hanged in her house in Kianyaga, Kirinyaga County. Police say she suffered head injuries before her body was hanged, allegedly in an attempted cover-up.
Her husband was later arrested at Kianyaga Police Station, where he had gone to report his wife's death, alleging suicide. Kirinyaga East sub-county Deputy Police Commander Patrick Nyaanga reported that the suspect had quarrelled with his wife at Kiandai village.
These incidents are part of the worryingly rising statistics of homicides in Kirinyaga County this year. Homicide detectives have been a busy lot since the beginning of the year, with at least 25 murders and two suicides reported in just eight months, almost three times higher than the whole of last year.
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data shows nine murder cases were prosecuted in Kirinyaga courts in 2019. The killings in Kirinyaga may be unrelated, but motives can be divided into two — domestic wrangles and violent robberies.
Security officials insist that the high statistics are not a reflection of the county's security situation, but rather due to poor conflict resolution mechanisms. Central Regional Commissioner Wilfred Nyagwanga attributed the rising violence to outdated cultural beliefs where couples and conflicting parties resort to violence rather than talk out issues.
He called for a societal approach in tackling the problem, involving the society, from the Nyumba Kumi to even the church. However, robbery-related murders are also on the rise this year, with five bodies found dumped in different parts of the county.
