This archive report was first published on 11 October 2019.
On October 11, 2019, Kenya Navy and South African divers made a breakthrough in the search for a vehicle that slipped off a ferry at the Likoni Channel on September 29, 2019.
After 13 days of searching, the vehicle was finally retrieved from the Indian Ocean. The remains of Mariam Kighenda and her four-year-old daughter Amanda Mutheu were also found in the vehicle.
Government spokesperson Cyrus Oguna had announced earlier that the vehicle might have been spotted, and the Navy would retrieve the corpses and the car within hours. However, the exercise was postponed to Friday due to difficulties in bringing the wreckage to the surface.
Recovery teams had been facing challenges due to a lack of adequate oxygen, which limited the time Kenyan divers could spend underwater. Divers also encountered difficulties while attaching the car to a cord on the pulleys.
According to sources, the first attempt to pull out the car was successful, but the cord snapped when the crane began to pull it upwards.
