Ordeal of Nyeri lawyer at the hands of ruthless gunmen

The sight of five gun-toting shadows crawling from the darkness terrified veteran Nyeri lawyer Kebuka Wachira.

A cold bead of sweat trickled down his forehead as a grip of fear immobilised him in the driver’s seat.

He contemplated reversing his saloon car to escape the impending danger, but could not muster the courage to do so as the gunmen who looked like ghostly shadows in the darkness eventually reached him, with their rifles aimed at his windscreen.

They whisked him out of the vehicle, ransacked his pockets and grabbed the kilo of meat he was carrying home, his cash and two mobile phones before dragging him to the back of the vehicle.

A lot was going on through the mind of the shaken lawyer as he begged the assailants for mercy but to no avail.

The lawyer had just closed his office in Nyeri town on November 19,2007, and was on his way home near Wambugu farm when he encountered the assailants who trapped him by barricading the narrow road with another vehicle.

As a former Land’s registrar in Nyeri and a leading lawyer in the town which is dogged by land and succession disputes, Kebuka knew what was happening was only going to get worse as the gunmen ordered him to jump into the vehicle’s boot.

When he appeared hesitant, the gunmen grabbed him and bundled him into the small trunk of his Toyota Corolla and drove off.

The gunmen would hours later abandon the vehicle at an unfamiliar place where the lawyer was rescued by passers-by who heard him yelling for help from the boot.

Third victim

But unknown to Kebuka, he was the third victim that night of a spiralling wave of crime in Nyeri town.

The other two victims were an Asian couple who were accosted by the same gunmen as early as 6pm and terrorised for an hour before being robbed of jewellery, cash and other household items.

The gang then sped off in the couple’s pickup truck – which was the vehicle they had used to barricade the road when they accosted the lawyer.

But the proverbial fortieth day for the robbers who had specialised in carjacking motorists along the Karatina-Nyeri highway would come barely two days later.

An informant directed police to a house in Kangemi estate, about 500 metres from Nyeri town, where one of the suspects identified as Peter Wanjohi was believed to be residing.

They pounced on him just as he left the house, and recovered from him the lawyer’s two mobile phones, and the gold chain and two gold plated bangles, which had been stolen from the Asian couple.

Wanjohi was subsequently charged with robbery with violence and being in possession of stolen goods, before a Nyeri magistrate who sentenced him to death.

His subsequent appeal at the Nyeri High Court against the death sentence was dismissed by justices James Wakiaga and Joseph Sergon on June 8, 2012.

But at the Court of Appeal in Nyeri, a heated exchange ensued between the Regional Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Job Kaigai and the suspect’s lawyer Wahome Gikonyo over the verdicts of the two lower courts.

Gikonyo argued that the police had not proved that the jewellery they had allegedly recovered was stolen, and that they never availed a directory of the loot they claimed to have found in the suspect’s house.

Kaigai on the other hand argued that lack of the inventory had not compromised the evidence in any way.

Ultimately, appellate judges Alnashir Visram, Martha Koome and Otieno Odek dismissed the appeal and upheld the death sentence against the suspect.