Police officer's body exhumed after two years in murder probe
David Gikurumi Murai who died in October 2020. His body was exhumed two years later on September, 10, after the DCI obtained a court order
On the morning of Friday, October, 23, 2020, a woman made a distress call to the Nyahururu Police Station. Her boyfriend, with whom she had a child, had died by suicide.
Police immediately went to the couple’s house and found the body of traffic officer David Gikurumi Murai near a bed in a kneeling position, with a blue rope around his neck.
The suicide story did not pass muster and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations vowed to crack the mystery of the officer’s death in the house at Garden Estate in Nyahururu.
A postmortem report showed that he was murdered. The autopsy, conducted by government pathologist Dr Boniface Miring’u, revealed that the officer was strangled. His chest had injuries suspected to have been inflicted by a shoe, meaning he may have been stepped on or kicked.
Though the officer was buried, the DCI’s homicide unit continued to investigate his death, questioning his girlfriend, Selina Wambui Wangui, and others.
On Friday, DCI officers exhumed the body of the officer, who died aged 43, having served for 21 years.
This followed an order last week from the Nyahururu High Court to exhume the body for a forensic autopsy to establish the true cause of his death.
Detectives and other specialists during the exhumation of the body of the late Nyahururu based traffic police officer David Gikurumi Murai at the family home in Gathanji, Nyandarua County. Murai died in October 2020 under Mysterious circumstances.
The first postmortem showed that some traces of unknown chemical substances were also found in the officer’s body.
“He had two ligature marks on the neck. He had also been stepped on, on the chest. Strangulation was the cause of the death,” read Dr Miringu’s report.
The report also revealed that the body had no marks of struggle.
On Friday, a DCI team led by homicide unit head Samuel Nyoguto and government pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor oversaw the exhumation in Ngano, Gathanji sub-county, Nyandarua County.
“The required samples have been taken and we are now awaiting the postmortem report,” said an officer privy to the case.
The officer’s family demanded justice, with detectives from the Nyahururu Police Station suspecting that the officer could have been killed elsewhere before his body was placed at his bedside.
Ms Wangui was charged and released on Sh70,000 cash bail.
The officer and Ms Wangui, who claimed to be his second wife, had a troubled marriage, said his brother and family spokesperson Samuel Murai.
“The night before my brother was found dead in his house, he had called me to tell me that Ms Wangui had locked him inside the bedroom,” Mr Murai said.
He said the two had lived together for a year and had one child.
