Detectives in Kikuyu Police Station in Kiambu County have been allowed to hold for 14 days a 15-year-old girl who admitted to killing her three siblings and a cousin in a graphic confession that shocked the nation.
The murders, investigating officers told the court, occurred on diverse dates between mid-last year and this year.
The lid to the macabre killings was lifted last week after the father of the accused reported at Kikuyu Police Station that he suspected his daughter was behind the brutal acts.
The minor was arrested and, upon interrogation, admitted that she had killed her three siblings aged one year and three months, five years, and seven-and-a-half years.
The minor also admitted that she killed her cousin, who was barely 20 months old, by drowning him in a well at their home in Gathiga village, Kabete Sub-County, in May this year.
Kikuyu Principal Magistrate Catherine Mburu Tuesday granted the prosecution two weeks to investigate the matter.
The prosecution had told the court that the matter before them was complex and that they needed more time to establish the motive of the killings and whether other people were involved.
Investigating officer George Muriuki told the court they possibly needed to exhume the bodies of the victims to ascertain the actual cause of death to enable them press more charges.
The minor is being held at the Kabete children’s remand home until September 12, when the case will come up for mention.
The suspect had initially been presented at the Kiambu Law Courts but the investigating officers were informed that the case should be heard within the jurisdiction under which the offences were committed. The case was then moved to the Kikuyu Law Courts.
The killings rekindle memories of January last year, when Lawrence Warunge, 25, killed his father Nicholas Njoroge Warunge, his mother Ann Wanjiku, their adopted nephew Maxwell Njenga, his brother Christian Njenga Njoroge and farmhand James Kinyanjui Wambaa in Kiambu.
Lawrence is already in remand and recently applied to be released on either bond or bail. But his family has vehemently opposed the application, arguing that during interrogation, he had said he intended to kill his two sisters. The family claimed that Lawrence had continued to issue threats from remand.
“The Warunge and Njenga families... do not wish for the accused to be released from custody throughout the length of the case [because he] said during his arrest that he had every intention of killing his remaining two sisters and other members of the family,” the family told a Kiambu court.
“The accused seems not to be remorseful and, if released, may make good his threat of killing his sisters, cousins and relatives,” the Warunge family says in court papers seen by the Nation.
Lawrence, through a probation report, has revealed that he felt his parents hated and neglected him, describing his father as a serial drunkard.
“He says he used to be mistreated by the house help and neighbours, who asked him to smoke cigarettes while his parents were busy with work, which affected his self-esteem,” the probation report states.
