This archive report was first published on 19 December 2019.
On March 14 and 15, 2016, a taxi driver named Richard Simiren Kumomoru was robbed and murdered in Narok, Kenya. The perpetrators, Bashir Ibrahim and Ibrahim Abdullahi, were students at Fanaka and Nakate secondary schools respectively at the time of the crime.
According to court records, the two men violently robbed Kumomoru of a motor vehicle valued at Sh1.2 million and a Samsung galaxy mobile phone worth Sh15,000. They were later arrested and charged with the murder, which they initially denied.
However, in June 2016, one of the accomplices, a 17-year-old student at Fanaka Secondary School, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in a correctional institution. The prosecution maintained that the offence was serious and that justice needed to be served, while the defence argued for leniency, citing the defendants' youth and aspirations to continue their education.
On December 19, 2019, Chief Magistrate Ms. Wilbroda Juma sentenced Bashir Ibrahim and Ibrahim Abdullahi to death, citing the inhuman manner in which the taxi driver was murdered. The two men were given 14 days to appeal the sentence.
