Chaos at Mbita Law Court after mother allowed to bury boy killed in protests

Chaos erupted at Mbita law courts as the family of Kennedy Onyango, the 12-year-old boy who was fatally shot in Rongai at the height of the Gen-Z protest, clashed.

Security officers manning the court had to call for reinforcement from Mbita Police Station who flushed out the relatives and lobbed teargas canisters to disperse the feuding family members.

This happened as the Mbita Principal Magistrate Martha Agutu ruled that the boy’s body be handed over to his mother for burial.

The burial boy has been rocked with controversy since he was killed by a bullet in Ongata Rongai town within Kajiado County on June 27.

Soon after his death, his father Denish Okinyi objected to his mother’s, Jacinta Anyango, decision to have the boy buried in Rusinga Island where she remarried.

Okinyi went to court to seek legal redress where he sued Anyango for deciding to bury his son in the ‘wrong’ home. Okinyi is a resident of Kisaku Village in Suba Suba sub-county while Anyango wanted the boy to be buried in another homestead in Mbita sub-county.

In her judgment yesterday, the magistrate directed that the body of the boy be handed over to Anyango for burial in her new homestead at Matenga Village, Kamasengre West Sub-location, Rusinga West Location.

She stated that Okinyi neglected the boy after he separated from his mother in 2012.

“From the evidence adduced, he neglected the child during his lifetime despite him being his biological father,” Agutu said.

She noted that Okinyi did not demonstrate any family closeness when Onyango was alive.

“The fact that the deceased boy was his biological son does not give him the exclusive rights to bury his remains,” she noted.

Agutu also ruled that Okinyi did not provide to the court evidence that he legally married Anyango under the customary Abasuba law.

This came after Okinyi had earlier told the court that he gave out six cows as a pride price to Anyango’s family to make their marriage official.

But he failed to avail a witness to testify this.

She concluded that Okinyi did not deserve the right to bury Onyango’s remains.