Stephen Mzee Thomas alias Kerenje and Steven Otieno Okalu leaving a Mombasa Court on February 17, 2022, after they were found guilty of rape and attempting to kill a lady by tying her at a railway line. [Kelvin Karani, Standard]
A Mombasa court has convicted two men who caused a woman to be hit by a train in 2017 after a love affair went sour.
Mombasa Senior Principal Magistrate Vincent Adet found Stephen Mzee Thomas alias Kirenje and his friend Steven Otieno Okalu guilty of attempted murder and gang rape.
Kirenje, with the help of Okalu, tied his ex-girlfriend identified as DW on railway tracks at Kibarani in 2017 and left her for dead.
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The two were charged with attempted murder and gang rape of DW in 2017 in Mombasa county.
Adet ordered for the assessment report before sentencing the duo.
“From the foregoing, I hereby find the prosecution made its case on both charges and the accused are hereby convicted of attempted murder and gang rape.
"I order for a value assessment of the victim,” said Adet.
Kerenje and Okalu are accused of tying DW across the railway line at Kibarani in Mombasa in 2017.
DW was run over by a train from Nairobi and her legs had to be amputated.
DW told the court in 2017 that she lost her legs when her estranged husband, raped, stabbed and trussed her on a rail truck to be crushed by a speeding train in Kibarani area of Mombasa.
The train severed her legs near the hips and she is now in a wheelchair.
During the violent act on February 3, 2017 she was three months pregnant.
She claimed she was married to Kirenje for a brief period while Okalu was a childhood friend.
She told Senior Principal Magistrate Henry Nyakweba that she was married to Kirenje for only a month before they broke up.
"Kirenje, who had been my boyfriend attacked me on the night of February 3, 2017 while I was walking home alone. Okalu stabbed me when I demanded to know why they were attacking me and proceeded to rape me and then they tied me on the railway line and left me there to be run over by the train," said DW.
"They told me that I would die there as they walked away. The train was approaching quickly so I struggled to at least move my upper body off the rail and only managed to secure the upper body because of the stab wound as the train came crushing both my lower limps."
(DW) added that she tried screaming to save herself by throwing rocks at the approaching train to alert the captain of her presence on the rails and have him stop but it was too late.
The train only managed to stop with her under the rails, having been run over and her legs crushed.
DW said the captain went to her and upon realising that she was alive and writhing in pain, called for help.
"The train stopped and the captain came over and saw me crying because I had not passed out. So he called for help," she said.
Their sentence will be delivered on March 8, 2022.
