Four suspects arrested over Kisumu bouncers’ murder

Bonface, Ronald, Caroline and Kevin in the dock. They have been arraigned in a Busia Law Court over the gruesome murder of six bouncers in Butula. [Photo, Standard]

Four suspects arrested over to the gruesome murder of six bouncers in Butula have been arrested hours after the Kisumu Bouncers Association called for speedy investigations.

The suspects were presented in court and expected to take plea on December 2, 2019, after the court accepted a request by police to detain them for two weeks as they complete investigation.

Two of the suspects are close relatives of the late businessman Johannes Okoth.

Boniface Onyango, a brother of the businessman and Okoth’s first wife Caroline Atieno Ngeso appeared before Principal Magistrate Samson Temu alongside two other suspects, Kevin Omondi and Ronald Oduor.

Earlier today, Kisumu Bouncers Associations through their spokesperson Edgar Ochieng Odoyo speculated that the mob that descended on their colleagues was acting on instruction from a close family member of the deceased.

“Nobody would have acted in that manner, in that home without an instruction,” said Ochieng.

The six bouncers were lynched to death at a funeral of a slain businessman in a Butula village on Friday by a mob amidst confusion under whose knowledge they were securing the coffin.

The reasons behind the cold blood killing of the bouncers are still unclear but media reports revealed there was suspicion among mourners.

When asked to identify themselves, they allegedly said that they had been hired by the deceased’s second wife Mercy Awuor to provide security at the funeral.

But Mercy denied hiring them and residents developed suspicion that they may have been behind Johannes’ death.

However, the Kisumu Bouncers Association is adamant that their counterparts were hired by one of the family members to carry the coffin and offer security.

“The bouncers were invited by a sister of the same land. They went all the way to the mortuary and carried the coffin to the homestead. All this had happened yet no one asked when they started killing from the first person to the sixth. Is our intelligence dead?” said Edgar Ochieng.

Ochieng’ urged people to debunk the notion that any person who goes to a funeral and is well built must be treated with suspicion.

The association had vowed to arrest the suspects and walk them to police stations if law enforcers were taking time.