On the early morning of 1st January 2020, Edward Gichigo, fondly known as Eddie by his friends and family, is said to have been killed in a hit and run accident in Kitengela.
Early reports indicate that the vehicle that hit him did not stop.
He was pronounced dead almost immediately after.
To any casual observer, this may look like any other accident until one interrogates the before and after happenings that raised quite a few eyebrows.
According to a legal document in this investigator's possession, which was shared by a DCI informant, there are many loose ends in the story of his death that make some family members and close friends say there was more to his death than a simple hit-and-run accident.
The document, which is currently with DCI and ODPP, is a legal request by his immediate family members for relevant investigative bodies to re-open the investigation in order to ascertain how the deceased died.
Attempts to obtain action and the truth from Kitengela Police Station over the years have been largely unproductive with the added frustration of the Occurrence Book (OB) record said to be missing.
This investigator has looked into this case for several months and the official communication to authorities to initiate investigations has prompted us to bring to light the details of Edward's demise for the public and investigative bodies to act in order for the truth to come out.
According to the letter sent to ODPP, DCI and copied to IPOA, Edward was leaving a party where he had been with his then-wife, Jacinta Wanjiku Gachunga.
At the party, there was a heated argument where Eddie had insisted that the couple should go home while his wife wanted to continue drinking.
Though this was the first explanation given for the fight, it has since been said that the deceased may have confronted his wife over an affair she was having with one of her 'girlfriends' who had been introduced to him as a casual female acquaintance.
Following the fight, Eddie is said to have driven off from the party, which enraged Jacinta.
She then hopped on a motorcycle and followed him.
According to first witness accounts at the time, Jacinta caught up with her husband and started kicking the vehicle while still on the bodaboda which forced Eddie to stop and get out of the car.
The argument is said to have continued with a physical altercation being observed by the said witnesses.
It is at this point that reports arise that Jacinta pushed Eddie onto oncoming traffic.
Eddie was then hit and flung into the air, landing in a ditch.
Instead of Jacinta rushing to his side to offer help, she quickly got back onto the motorbike, fled the scene and switched off her phone.
She also did not inform his family members of the accident.
She re-appeared later at Shalom Hospital, where her husband had been taken and pronounced dead on arrival.
Through the shock of losing Eddie, and with family members attempting to get to the bottom of what happened to their kin, Jacinta remained non-committal and was also hardly involved in the funeral arrangements to bury her husband.
It has been six years of grief and unanswered questions, including an inquest, which is required by law, not being done to show how he died.
At the point of publishing this article, Jacinta has never been properly interrogated or investigated.
A casual glance of her socials shows she deleted all traces of her late husband, including their wedding photos.
The OB recorded when the details were fresh at the time of Eddie's death going missing from Kitengela police station records also points to mischief.
She is currently living with her said lover, Stella Nelima, who is a proud member of the LGBTQ community, going by her photos online.
Stella is believed to be the reason the altercation took place.
This writer will continue following this case for Eddie's sake because we all know how Kenyan men undergoing domestic violence or death at the hands of women are ridiculed, not taken seriously and also treated as a statistic not worth pursuing unless they are high-profile victims like the Cohen murder.
More focus is put on females dying at the hands of men, even when a casual glance of our court system proves women are also perpetrators.
It will also be interesting to see what steps DCI, ODPP and IPOA will take with the information availed to them thus far.
Recently, Kenya was shocked when a known senior police officer (OCS) pushed her female lover from their 4th-floor apartment in a rage.
Is Eddie's death another case of an enraged lover?
We urge followers of our content to demand that no stone be left unturned until Kenyans know how Eddie died!
Below are official documents filed by Edward Gichigo's family.
