Gruesome murder that dashed a family’s wedding plans

A farm hand tends to the late Paul Mainas' grave at Miche village, off the Nyeri - Karatina road, the deceased was killed by thugs on the eve of his brothers wedding.[ PHOTO: MOSE SAMMY/STANDARD]

They had all dressed colourfully to welcome their wedding guests but instead they received grieving neighbours arriving to view a badly mutilated body.

Yellow police tape – instead of colourful wedding ribbons – mapped out a crime scene in what would have been the reception area.

Inside the semi-permanent house lay the lifeless body of Paul Maina; his skull blown off and his brains spattered all over the floor.

The gruesome scene at the homestead in Micha village, Nyeri County, was evidence of the terror meted out on Maina the previous day.

The village had been warming up for the wedding of Maina’s younger brother when gunshots rent the air at around midnight, the night before.

Maina’s wife was a police officer and robbers would be least expected to strike at such a homestead. But they did.

When we visited the now deserted homestead, eleven years after the robbery, Maina’s brother Simon Njiri recounted the painful ordeal that night.

Maina had arrived home only hours earlier to attend his brother’s wedding when the pistols and AK47 totting robbers struck.

But unlike most Kenyans who give in to robbers’ demands at the sight of a gun, Maina did the unthinkable.

“As soon as they broke into the house, he went after them with a panga, and cut off the arm of one of the robbers,” narrated Njiri.

One of the robbers shot him in the forehead, killing him in the presence of his wife who had all along been begging for mercy from the robbers.

There was ample forensic evidence to at least find the robber whose arm was slashed off.

But a mistake in the collection and labelling of the blood samples coupled with a broken chain of evidence would four years later, serve as the loophole that earned a prime suspect freedom.

Most conspicuous was the failure by the detectives to note that the scene of crime had blood from two sources – the suspect whose arm was chopped off, and the late Maina.

As the case commenced, crucial exhibits mysteriously disappeared, including spent bullet cartridges, the bullet removed from Maina’s head and a bloody panga collected at the scene. Justices James Wakiaga and Joseph Serrgon dropped the death sentence the suspect - identified as Anthony Murage - had been handed by the Magistrate's Court.

However, Maina’s family still believes justice will be served one day. “I believe there is a God, even if they are not punished here on earth, one day they will get their sentence,” says Njiri.