By Isaiah Lucheli
NAIROBI; KENYA: University student Mercy Keino may have been murdered elsewhere and her body dumped on the road to fake an accident, an inquest into her death heard.
A police officer who was the first to arrive at the scene yesterday told the court that when he reached the location, it gave an impression that a fatal accident had occurred but on further investigation the findings told a different story.
The officer, Thomas Obogi, explained he realised that several things did not add up and concluded that there was foul play.
“In the event of an accident, especially where a person has been hit by a vehicle, the scene normally has a pool of blood due to the impact. But in this case it was different since there was no blood at the scene,” he said.
The investigating officer added that many accident scenes are usually strewn with personal properties and effects of the victims, which was not the case.
“The skull of the deceased had also been ripped off. It appeared like the deceased had been killed elsewhere and her body dumped on the busy highway to make it look like an accident,” he told the court.
The lawyers cross-examining the officer had asked him whether he had explored the possibility that the student had been hit by a speeding vehicle and flung several metres away from the exact scene of the accident, to which he responded he had covered a wide area surrounding the scene.
No blood found
“I surveyed the scene of the accident and its environs by walking for over 100 metres but there was no trace of blood anywhere and there was no sign of the missing skull,” he said.
The officer added that in an ideal situation, two police officers are supposed to go to an accident scene but in that particular case he took a breakdown operator to check the reported incident.
Obogi explained that on arriving at the scene and conducting preliminary investigations, he called for an ambulance to collect the varsity student’s body and take it to the mortuary.
He corroborated the report by the breakdown operator that he (the operator) assisted the police officer to carry the body into an ambulance from the scene.
“When the ambulance arrived I asked the breakdown operator to help me carry the body into the vehicle. The body was taken to City Mortuary,” he said.
Juja MP William Kabogo, his driver and aides have been adversely mentioned in the student’s death, whose body was discovered on Waiyaki Way.
