Puzzle of missing woman found dead with deep cuts

Police are investigating the death of a woman who was picked up by a taxi that was supposed to take her to hospital.

The family of Mildred Odira reported that she had gone missing last Tuesday on her way to a city hospital.

Relatives found her body at City Mortuary yesterday. Records at the mortuary show that the body was taken there the same day she disappeared.

Police said they collected the body by the roadside at the Allsops/GSU underpass last Tuesday, apparently shortly after Ms Odira had left in the taxi from her house in Kariobangi South that morning to be driven to Ruaraka Uhai Neema Hospital in Kasarani.

A sharp object

Ms Odira’s brother said the body had deep cuts on the forehead, neck and navel, injuries that seemed to have been inflicted with a sharp object. Her legs had been crushed.

Kasarani police boss Robinson Mboloi said officers were informed that there was a body by the roadside. He said the person appeared to have hit by a car.

“We collected the then unidentified body and took it to the mortuary,” Mr Mboloi said.

He did not give the identity of the person(s) who made the report.

Mboloi added that his department would wait for the results of a postmortem to determine the cause of death.

Odira was a telephone operator at the Nation Media Group offices but was an employee of Foresight company.

The taxi driver and a guard at the estate who called the driver are being held at Kasarani Police Station.

The hospital said Odira was not booked at the facility, suggesting she never reached there, even though CCTV footage captured the taxi driving into the hospital at about 4.30am on January 29.

Odira was said to have left her house in Kariobangi South on the morning of January 29 to go to Ruaraka Uhai Neema Hospital.

Relatives said she had been on medication for ulcers and high blood pressure.

Her nine-year-old son failed to attend school that day, raising questions about Odira’s whereabouts.

Her phone was switched off, prompting her elder sister, Maureen Anyango, to visit her house.

Guards at the gate informed her that they had called a taxi driver to help Odira get to hospital.

CCTV footage

The visit to the hospital last Wednesday raised more questions than the family had anticipated and with the help of police officers from Kasarani Police Station, the hospital’s CCTV footage was made available.

The driver had on Friday told the family that he left Odira at the hospital and was only at the facility for about 20 minutes.

But according to the hospital records, the driver entered the hospital gates at 4:30am and left at 5:57am.

The hospital’s management said it would review its CCTV footage to establish what the taxi driver was doing at the facility that long.

Police said a postmortem would give more information.