Family in agony as police probe bride’s shooting

By JECKONIA OTIENO

Nairobi, Kenya: Saturday should have been a happy day for the family and friends of Beatrice Adhiambo Ongowu and Newton Odhiambo Nyaoke. Instead, they have been thrust into the heart of a bloody battle over police complicity in capital crimes.

After 13 years and four children together, Betty and Newton were planning their wedding at the ACK St Christopher’s Church in Nairobi’s Mathare North area. Instead, their two grieving families are preparing for funerals.

Betty, 32, and Newton’s brother Ayub Nyaoke, 26, were shot dead Monday in broad daylight, in the heart of the city by a four-man death squad.

The killing of the businesswoman and the police officer has sent the 40-year-old Newton, a security guard, into hiding. His children with Betty — Natalie, Tiffany, Melanie and Junior — are in the care of other family members.

It has since emerged that Police Constable Ayub Nyaoke, who was assigned to the Anti-Stock Theft Unit in Narok, had testified before the National Police Service Commission about the activities of alleged impostor Joshua Karianjahi Waiganjo.

The former reservist is accused of committing numerous violent robberies and other crimes while passing himself off as a senior police officer with the help of others in the force.

Waiganjo, who recently threatened to spill the beans on his activities, was unmasked during investigations into the killings of 42 people in a botched operation to recover stolen cattle in Baragoi.

PC Nyaoke and several other police officers were expected to testify in cases against Waiganjo’s alleged patrons — interdicted ASTU head Remy Ngugi and former Rift Valley police boss John Mbijjiwe.

Police suspect Nyaoke was the target of the killing and Betty was murdered simply for being there.

Efforts to reconstruct the crime using eyewitness accounts and closed circuit television footage are going on. There is little evidence this was an attempted robbery: at least three men followed Newton, Betty and Ayub down Kimathi Street to the Maru Italian Shoe and Jewellery shop at Corner House where the couple planned to buy a ring.

One stood at the door as the other two went in. A fourth man is believed to have been in a nearby getaway vehicle. Two shots rang out. Shop owner Kanti Maru ducked behind the counter. Three people were left sprawled on the floor, one dead, the other dying of a headshot and the last paralysed with terror. The killers’ walked away without stealing anything, not even the Sh8,000 Newton had withdrawn from an ATM machine just minutes earlier. Betty died on the spot. Ayub passed on a day later at the Kenyatta National Hospital while undergoing treatment.

Questions are being raised about the police response to the crime. At a time when a squad targeting muggers has shot dead several people, four or more members of the death squad were able to escape the scene of the murders in the heart of the city.  The chain of events has changed the lives of different people and events that were to have a happy ending:

Newton Nyaoke, Betty’s husband

“We had just come from a funeral (for a friend’s child) at the Langata Cemetery and were in town for lunch,” Newton says.

They stopped by an ATM on Mfangano Street to withdraw Sh8,000 and then went to a chips shop on Tom Mboya Street. “My wife rarely eats much but on this day she ate two plates of chips as it had been a long day.” After their late lunch, the trio went to the jewellery shop to buy their wedding rings arriving, at about 4pm.

“We found some people in (the shop) but they walked out,” he says. “Three young men (with guns) entered and ordered us to kneel. We complied.”

Newton says he passed out when gunshots rang out. When he came to, his wife was dead to his right and his brother Ayub was unconscious to his left.

He is now left with four children, one of them a toddler, to raise on his own. Of Natalie, 10, Tiffany, 7, Melanie, 4, and Junior, 1, who lost their mother and uncle, Newton says: “Bringing them up on my own will be my greatest challenge but I pray that God will give me the grace (I need).”

Rose Ongowu, Betty’s mother

No one understands the pain of a mother who has lost two daughters in less than a year.

Rose Ongowu and her husband James Ombura had been looking forward to their daughter’s formal union when tragedy struck.  “I was in Sondu (Kisumu County) and I got the news from Beatrice’s brother,” she says. “He said that Beatrice had been attacked by criminals as they went shopping and she was dead.” Beatrice, her second-born, was the second daughter she lost to death in less than a year. On January 7, Rose buried another daughter killed in a road accident. 

The wedding planned for Saturday should have been a turning point for the family after a year clouded by tragedy.  “I had planned to arrive (to Nairobi) on Friday for the happy occasion but I have arrived here today (Tuesday) to mourn. What an absurdity?”  The whole family had planned to buy Beatrice a gas cooker, which she had said she really wanted to lessen the time she used to prepare meals. Rose’s wish is that the Government’s investigations will bring the killers to book.

Rev Felix Ndirangu, the celebrant

As the vicar at the Mathare North ACK St Christopher’s Parish, Rev Ndirangu was supposed to officiate at Betty and Newton’s wedding. He says the two had gone through all the steps required and finalised their plans.

“We had considered three dates to hold the ceremony: the 3rd, 10th and 17th of August. The first one was too near, while the second one was dropped because I had to attend a ceremony at St Stephen’s Cathedral, Jogoo Road. The date that had been set was never to be.”

The vicar, who praises the couple’s decision to solemnise their marriage, will instead be presiding over a different ceremony, not a wedding.

Florence Adhiambo, the caterer

As the proprietor of Befo Bakers, Florence was commissioned to prepare the couple’s wedding cake.

She says she had made a seven-piece fruitcake with the biggest piece shaped like a Bible but the happy couple never saw it.

“They were supposed to come and view the cake on Wednesday,” says the wedding’s caterer.

“But as I watched news on Monday, my husband told me that there would be no wedding as the bride had been shot dead.” Florence was also meant to sing for the bride and groom as a member of the St Christopher’s choir.

Beatrice Achieng’, Newton and Ayub’s sister

“We had gone to bury (a friend’s child) in Langata,” Beatrice recalls. The last car available to take them back home was full and her sister-in-law Betty chose to wait for a matatu instead of climbing into the back of a pick-up truck.

Beatrice says her brother’s wife feared she would be dusty by the time they got to town. That was the last she saw her sister-in-law and namesake alive.

That evening she received a call asking her to call Mama Natalie (Betty). When she tried calling, the phone went unanswered. Her brother, Newton, called her later and told her that his wife and brother had been shot.

Patrick Oduma, OCPD Central

As the man under whose jurisdiction the two lives were lost, Oduma has the task of catching the three killers. However, the Central Division police boss cannot explain how the killers escaped without bumping into any patrols.

“We are yet to get any leads but we believe that we will get the criminals,” he told this writer.

“We cannot call it a robbery.

We can call it cold blooded murder because the criminals killed and left without stealing anything.”

PC Ayub Nyaoke, who was an officer with the Anti-Stock Theft Unit based in Narok, is believed to have been the target of the attack that also left his sister-in-law dead.

Oduma, who is tasked with ensuring the Central Business District is safe, has conducted high-profile operations against petty crime.