When Kennedy Onyango Juma left his home on the morning of September 30, 2026, for a trip to the market in Awendo, he left his wife, Mercela Anyango, at their home in Kamunga Village in Migori County, full of life.
Little did he know that the morning farewell would be their last, and that by the time he returned, a seemingly ordinary Sh700 debt would have set in motion a chain of events that would leave two people dead.
Moments after her husband left, Ms Anyango set off for a neighbouring home, where one Oburu Owino owed her Sh700. She had earlier told her husband that she intended to visit Mr Owino to recover the money, which she needed to settle some bills.
When Mr Juma returned home and found the house empty, he decided to look for his wife at the neighbour’s home, believing she might still be there collecting the debt.
“I thought she would still be at Owino’s home because that was where she had mentioned to me that she would be going when we spoke last,” Mr Juma said.
But when he arrived at Mr Owino’s home, neither his wife nor her debtor was there.
“I decided to return home, hoping to find her there,” Mr Juma explained.
He never made it home before finding the answer to his wife’s disappearance. Along the way, he stumbled upon her lifeless body dumped in a sugarcane plantation.
Distraught and frightened, Mr Juma immediately raised the alarm. Within minutes, angry residents had gathered at the scene where his wife’s body lay, grief quickly giving way to fury.
A manhunt was launched for Mr Owino, who residents identified as the main suspect in Ms Anyango’s death.
Uriri Sub-County Police Commander Ali Bashir.
Photo credit: File
Uriri Sub-county Police Commander Ali Bashir said officers were alerted that irate villagers were planning to lynch Mr Owino, whose whereabouts were initially unknown.
“It was later discovered that he had gone to Uriri Market when the police officer went to the scene where the body of the woman was lying,” Mr Bashir said.
A mob from the village traced Mr Owino to Uriri Market and attacked him with crude weapons. By the time police officers arrived, he was dead.
Mr Bashir condemned the mob for taking the law into their own hands, stressing that investigators had, at that stage, established no evidence linking Mr Owino to Ms Anyango’s death. He said no witness had come forward to claim they had seen Mr Owino kill his neighbour.
“The fact that the body was found near his house does not make him a killer. This can only be determined after investigations are done,” the police commander said.
Mr Bashir said the debt dispute could have been resolved peacefully had the parties sought the intervention of local administrators. The area chief or assistant chief, he said, could have helped resolve the matter without bloodshed.
“Village elders can also be involved in such cases. They can help settle disputes involving debts,” he said.
The bodies of Ms Anyango and Mr Owino were taken to Migori County Referral Hospital mortuary for preservation as police commenced investigations into the circumstances surrounding both deaths.
