This archive report was first published on 21 December 2021.
On December 21, 2021, a court in Siaya handed life sentences to two men, Benjamin Odhiambo and Vincent Owuor, for their role in the murder of a boda boda rider in 2018.
The incident occurred on November 2018, when the two men hit the rider, Ronald Otieno, with their vehicle and ran over him multiple times, despite him being alive and unconscious.
According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, the two men had quarreled with the victim's girlfriend over an unknown issue and were in pursuit of her when the incident occurred.
As they approached Sigomere trading center, the motorbike caught up with the vehicle and overtook it. The driver, Benjamin Odhiambo, accelerated and hit the motorbike from the back, tossing the pillion passenger to a nearby ditch and the deceased on the road.
One of the accused, Vincent Owuor, alighted from the vehicle and confirmed the condition of their victim before positioning him along the tracks of the vehicle's tires and instructing his accomplice to run over the deceased several times.
However, the victim's brother, who had landed on a ditch at the time, was still alive and faked his own death to escape the wrath of the vicious men.
Police arrived at the scene and noted that the accident did not appear normal. Homicide detectives from DCI headquarters took over investigations and circulated the vehicle on the police radar.
The vehicle was later flagged down as it approached Nairobi and the two suspects arrested. The vehicle was impounded and became the key exhibit in unraveling the murder mystery.
A team of homicide detectives and Scenes of Crime personnel subjected the vehicle to a clinical forensic analysis and collected several samples for examination.
The results of the tests from the DCI forensic lab and the government chemist confirmed that the vehicle had overrun the body of the deceased several times, with traces of the deceased's brain matter and DNA found beneath the vehicle.
An autopsy conducted by Dr Thaddeus Masawe at Siaya County Referral Hospital confirmed that the deceased died as a result of head injury, with the head crushed and limbs, ribs, and legs broken.
