Up until last Wednesday, Regina Nchoa was certain she had lost her two sons over a nasty sibling rivalry — her 23-year-old son Oscar Mithika was about to be buried and his brother Dionisio Kimathi, 41, was looking at prison time, or probably lynching, for his brother’s killing.
This is the bizarre story of sibling rivalry characterised by death threats, a man who came back “from the dead” on the eve of his funeral and a murder mystery. It happened in Kanuni village in Igembe South, Meru County.
Were it not for his disappearance and being presumed dead, Mithika would perhaps still be enduring constant bullying from his brother Kimathi.
There were celebrations after Mithika returned home on the eve of his "burial".
Photo credit: Gitonga Marete | Nation Media Group
Their mother said Kimathi was used to threatening his brother, swearing that he would kill him.
“He walked around every day with a sharp machete shouting that he was going to kill him. It was very scary,” she said.
Three weeks ago, Mithika decided he had had enough of the constant altercations, fist fights and death threats, so he ran away from home.
“I could not wait and get killed, so I ran away. I also feared that if he knew where I was, he would come for me,” Mithika told the Nation .
Mithika had no phone on him and he had not told anyone he was leaving home. So the family made a missing person’s report to the police.
After a two-week search that yielded nothing, the family concluded that Mithika was dead.
Then, a report came in that the body of an unidentified man had been found floating in the nearby River Ura.
The family went to the scene and concluded that the body was that of Mithika. A post-mortem revealed the man had been stabbed to death.
Ms Regina Nchoa, Mithika's mother.
Photo credit: Gitonga Marete | Nation Media Group
If Mithika had been murdered, then Kimathi was the prime suspect, the family and the villagers concluded. They started baying for his blood. Fearing for his life, Kimathi too, vanished.
The body was preserved at Miathene Level Four Hospital mortuary and the family started burial preparations. They paid Sh16,000 in mortuary fees. All arrangements for the burial had been concluded and everything was in place — the coffin, the burial permit and a gravesite. December 3 had been set for the burial.
However, at around 9pm on December 2, Mithika walked into his mother’s house.
“I thought it was a ghost. I was shaking in fear as he approached and I had to look closely to make sure he was the one. I was so shocked that I could not even touch him. I had been mourning my son who was still alive," said Nchoa.
Instead of the burial, the entire Kanuni village converged on the home for a celebration after the “resurrection” of the sixth-born.
Nchoa would also reveal that Kimathi, on the run for “his brother’s murder”, had visited her three days prior to beg for forgiveness for bullying Mithika, but denied killing him.
“He came home at night and went on his knees, begging me to forgive him for the threats, but said he had not killed his brother. From the way he spoke, I trusted him,” she said amid tears of joy.
As for Mithika, he said he did not understand why his family thought he was dead, yet he had been away for only three weeks.
Residents of Kanuni village in Igembe South, Meru County celebrate Mithika's return.
Photo credit: Gitonga Marete | Nation Media Group
“At the moment, I cannot talk much because I am in shock, but at the same time I am happy. I apologise to my family for keeping them in suspense and mourning my death. I had a feeling that something was not right because over the past week I was very uneasy,” he said.
On Sunday, the family had another round of celebration when Kimathi returned home. Speaking to the Nation , their father, Joshua Mucheke, said his sons had resolved their long-standing dispute that had led to their fights.
However, the family could not explain how it ended up identifying the body — which is still at the mortuary — as that of their son.
Still, a man was stabbed to death and police do not know who it is. Now they find themselves with an unidentified body and an unsolved murder on their hands.
