Redempta Ndinda grinned as she stroked her baby bump before boarding a matatu from Kambu township in Makueni County at dawn on June 8.
Four months pregnant, Ms Ndinda was still excited about the day she found out she was going to be a mother.
Redempta Ndinda during an interview with the Nation at the Makindu Sub-county Hospital in Makueni County on June 12, 2016. She survived a gun attack but lost her pregnancy when robbers attacked a matatu near Kambu Township.
Photo credit: Pius Maundu | Nation
However, within an hour, she had lost her pregnancy, while doctors at Kambu Sub-County Hospital worked to save her life following a violent attack by armed robbers.
“My life is in danger. One of the attackers said he was under instructions to take my life,” an inconsolable Ms Ndinda told the Nation at the Makindu Sub-County Hospital on Monday.
Ms Ndinda is one of two traders who were shot when armed robbers attacked a 14-seater matatu and stole from the passengers.
A week later, her voice still trembles when she recounts the incident.
The attack occurred when the matatu they were travelling in stopped to pick passengers at Kalulu area. Four armed robbers were among the waiting passengers.
Within no time, one of the robbers fired in the air, sending the waiting passengers and the matatu driver scampering.
Tabitha Kimilu assists her daughter, Redempta Ndinda, to drink porridge at the Makindu Sub-county Hospital in Makueni County on June 12, 2016. Redempta survived a gun attack but lost her pregnancy when robbers attacked a matatu near Kambu Township.
Photo credit: Pius Maundu | Nation
Paul Ndolo, a livestock trader, was sitting in the front seat between the driver and Ms Ndinda. He was trying to help her open the door so they could escape when he was hit in the right hip joint by a bullet.
“She is out of danger,” Samuel Muoki, a doctor who attended to Ms Ndinda told the Nation . A medical report seen by Nation shows that the 9mm bullet damaged her intestines and placenta. That is how she lost the four-month pregnancy.
“Thank God the bullet did not hit my backbone,” said Mr Ndolo. The robbers stole Sh83,000 from Ms Ndinda and Sh50,000 from another passenger before driving the matatu away. They abandoned it barely six kilometres away.
Kibwezi Sub-county Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) boss Charles Inoti said no one had been arrested in connection with the attack.
“We are pursuing the attackers. We have interrogated the driver and the passengers and taken the cartridges we collected for ballistic analysis,” he said on Monday.
The matatu attack is the latest in a series of highway robberies and increased gun attacks reported in the region. It occurred just one week after the body of a taxi driver was discovered in an abandoned well on the outskirts of Kambu Township. His car was stolen.
The Nation has since established that the Toyota Sienta operated as a taxi in Athi River Township, Machakos County.
While shocked residents decried the deteriorating security situation in the region, detectives identified a smoking gun.
“A stranger cannot manoeuvre around this place. It takes someone who is familiar with this region to locate the decommissioned well which was covered by overgrown bushes,” a security source told the Nation in confidence in connection with the May 31 killing of the taxi operator.
“We are playing with fire,” Mr Ndolo said of the spike in gun attacks in the region. “No one is safe”. He echoed John Mbokoyo, the chairman of an association of the Kambu business community. “We are calling for the transfer of the police officers and bosses operating in this region. It looks like security apparatus are either overwhelmed or have created an enabling environment for armed robbers to maraud in our midst,” he said in an interview.
Detectives have linked the recent spate of gun attacks in Makueni County to a notorious gang of highway robbers.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Kibwezi Sub-County Police Commander Felista Mukunjura urged residents to remain vigilant. She strongly believes that the robbers, who have brought the region to national attention, are from the local community. “You need to smoke out these criminals,” she told a recent security baraza.
Detectives have linked the recent spate of gun attacks plaguing the region to a notorious gang of highway robbers terrorising motorists on the section of the Mombasa–Nairobi highway passing through the Kibwezi region. The gang mainly targets trucks and imported second-hand cars travelling through the region from Mombasa.
“We suspect the gun used on the Monday attack is the same gun a highway robber used to gun down an accomplice as they attempted to hijack a high-end vehicle near Kambu Township last month,” a detective involved in the investigations said.
He was referring to the May 6 incident in which suspected highway robbers accidentally shot dead a suspected accomplice, Gift Muia, while attempting to hijack a car in the Mutomo area on the Mombasa–Nairobi highway.
At the time of his death, he had been granted a Sh600,000 bond by a magistrate court at the Makindu law courts in a robbery case. He had been charged alongside Alex Mweti Kasina and Jamleck Muli Muasa with hijacking a truck carrying 500 bags of rice worth Sh1.9 million near Kibwezi Township on December 23, 2024.
During the funeral held at Misava Village in Makueni County, friends and relatives eulogised him as social and generous.
