2 men who hit and ran over a victim multiple times handed life sentence » Capital News

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 21 – Two men have been sentenced to life in prison after a court in Siaya found them guilty of murder.

The two hit a boda boda rider and ran over him multiple times during an incident that occurred in 2018, the court heard. The court was also told they stage-managed the scene afterwards.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in a brief on Tuesday, the convicts, Benjamin Odhiambo and Vincent Owuor, hit the victim, Ronald Otieno, with their vehicle on November 2018.

They the ran over the deceased, who was still alive although unconscious, several times.

The DCI stated that the victim, together with his brother were in pursuit of the killer vehicle using a motorbike after the convicts left with the victim’s girlfriend whom he had quarreled with over an unknown issue.

“As they approached Sigomere trading center, the motorbike caught up with the vehicle and overtook it. Determined to get his girl back from the two men, the deceased together with his brother flagged down the vehicle but the driver had no intention to stop.”

“He accelerated and hit the motorbike from the back, tossing the pillion passenger to a nearby ditch and the deceased on the road. One of the accused driving the vehicle stopped and his accomplice alighted,” the DCI said.

The accused person driving the vehicle is said to have stopped and his accomplice alighted to confirm the condition of their victim, before he positioned the deceased, who was still alive at the time, along the tracks of the vehicle’s tires and instructed his accomplice to run over the deceased several times, according to the DCI.

The agency said that the brother to the deceased who had landed on a ditch at the time was still alive but the convicts assumed he had perished.

“The two then escaped to an unknown destination, after the 3am incident. Miraculously, the deceased’s brother who was tossed into the ditch did not die. He only faked his death to escape the wrath of the vicious men, who killed his brother in cold blood. The badly shaken victim who thanked God for saving his life listened from the ditch as the vehicle run over his brother’s body several times, before it finally left,” the agency said.

The DCI added that when police arrived at the scene, they noted that the accident did not appear normal.

“Homicide detectives from DCI headquarters were invited and immediately took over investigations into the matter. Police officers were raised across the country and the vehicle that was involved in the grisly murder circulated on the police radar,” the DCI added.

The DCI agents stated that the vehicle was later flagged down as it approached Nairobi and the two suspects arrested.

“The vehicle that had been thoroughly cleaned to erase any traces of the accident was impounded and later became the key exhibit into unraveling the murder mystery,” the agency said.

The agency added that a team of homicide detectives drawn from the Homicide branch and Scenes of Crime personnel subjected the vehicle to a clinical forensic analysis and collected several samples for examination.

The results of the tests from the DCI forensic lab and the government chemist confirmed that the vehicle overrun the body of the deceased severally, after traces of the deceased’s brain matter and DNA were found beneath the vehicle, according to the DCI detectives.

“An autopsy conducted by Dr Thaddeus Masawe at Siaya County Referral Hospital confirmed that the deceased died as result of head injury. The head was crushed, while the limbs, ribs and legs were all broken,” the DCI noted.