Nakuru, Kenya: Four teenagers, two of them secondary school students, are in police custody on suspicion of murder. A body of a taxi driver, they allegedly kidnapped in Narok was found in the boot of the car they were driving.
All the four, aged between 17 and 19, come from Barnabas Centre, a crime-prone area along the Nakuru-Nairobi Highway.
According to police, the gang had carjacked Richard Simiron, a taxi driver, on Monday night in Narok and driven him to Mwariki in Nakuru. They are thought to have tortured before killing him, there. Simiron’s body was found stashed in the boot of his vehicle, a Toyota Premio KBN 120P, by the police officers who intercepted it at 10pm at White House.
The body had deep cuts on the forehead, stab wounds on the left eye, visible injuries on the neck and left hand. One of the student, is a 17-year old Form Four student at City Mission Secondary School in Nakuru. The other student, Solomon Ndiru Njeri, 18, is in Form Three at Fanaka Secondary school in Narok County.
The other two are brothers, Moses Lonyeit Morgan 18, and Geoffrey Lompui Morgan, 19. According to the police, Lonyeit and Lompui were in their most-wanted list in connection with carjackings and robbery with violence in Nakuru and neighbouring counties.
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Police using a vehicle-tracking device caught up with the gang in Narok.
“When we got a signal from our counterparts in Narok, we quickly assembled a team to trail the vehicle whose tracking system indicated they were at Mwariki,” said Nakuru OCPD Musa Kongole.
Yesterday The Standard was informed the Form Three student had attended morning classes before disappearing from school. According to James Odende, principal of City Mission Secondary School, teachers had reported that the student had left the school on Monday without permission.
When he did not show up on Tuesday, the administration contacted his parents who said they did not know where he was. The news of his arrest was a shock to everyone at the school since he had no disciplinary issues.
“He is an average student academically, who kept to himself most of the time,” said the principal.
He was enrolled at the school last year in Form Two from Kiongororia in Mbaruk, Nakuru town. Solomon Ndiru Njeri had also sneaked from school on Sunday evening according to the principal of Fanaka Secondary school Principal Onesmas Wanjohi. Wanjohi said before sneaking out, Njeri had been accused of stealing Sh800 from another student at the school though he denied.
On Monday, he said the school administration called Njeri’s guardians to find out if he was at home, but he was not there.
“We kept in touch with the parents all the while trying to find about his whereabouts,” said the principal.
The teacher said Njeri was a new student at the school after transferring from Nairobi Road school in Nakuru.
“The student has been in the school since January 12 this year,” said Wanjohi.
Njeri was the one driving the car when they were intercepted by police. The police found a school sweater bearing Fanaka High School logo, which they suspect belonged to Njeri.
Detectives, who arrested the suspects said they had no guns on them and may have used crude weapons to kill the taxi driver.
“Their target was the vehicle and the driver must have resisted leading to the murder. At the moment we are not aware if they called his relatives to demand for ransom but we are investigating the same,’’ said Kongole.
The OCPD said Mwariki and Barnabas areas where all the four came from have lately been hit by crime wave.
“It is shocking that they are very young and some are even students,” said Kongole.
He said the four will be handed over to detectives from Narok where the crime was committed for further interrogation. Violent crime has been on the rise in the last few months. Last month, Egerton University lecturer was murdered by unknown people next to the scene where the four boys were arrested.
Alex Mariera, 28, was brutally murdered and his body found bundled in a car boot outside his compound at Kiti estate. His killers have not been apprehended.
His father, Mr Francis Misonge, said his son had travelled to Nakuru from Kirinyaga to pick up the logbook of his car, which he had put up for sale on OLX.
In December, five students died at the dangerous Salgaa stretch along the Nakuru-Eldoret Highway after a vehicle they were driving rammed into a bus at night.
It later emerged the boys were students without a driving licence.
