Three youthful men were on Monday night shot dead at point-blank at Mutoho village in Murang'a County by armed killers in three unmarked cars.
Their bullet-riddled bodies were collected on Tuesday morning by area police, who insisted that they did not know what or how it happened.
This was despite initial release of a police signal by area security committee indicating that the trio were "suspects connected to a spate of robberies in the area and its environs and had been trailed from Thika town and a gunfight ensued at Mutoho, leading to them getting gunned down and a pistol loaded with 12 bullets recovered".
Murang'a South Director of Criminal Investigations John Kanda on Tuesday said: "I am not privy to that incident, being that of police operation, and we have no such official report".
He continued to say, "what I know is that we were called by villagers who said there were three unknown bodies at Mutoho. We went and removed them (from the village) to the mortuary. I don't have further details since it is an incident under investigations".
Residents who spoke to the Nation, narrated how they witnessed the three being shot dead at 9pm on Monday by men who 'behaved like police officers'.
"The three men were in one car...The car stopped at Mutoho village along Kenol-Murang'a road. The three came out of the car and two other cars arrived almost immediately and there was brief gunfire," said Mr Martin Kamau, a resident.
"My own take is that the three were donated to the gunfire by the driver in whose car they were riding...it was a set up and most likely they were riding in either a security officer's or an informer's car".
He added that the men who shot them "had all the aura of police officers though not in uniform...the confidence, the precision and the marksmanship involved making me strongly feel they were just on official duty".
He said one of the three men who ended up gunned down had briefly exchanged fire with the assailants.
"After the guns went silent, the assailants collected a small arm from the three, rolled over the bodies from the road to a bushy road reserve, boarded their two vehicles and left the scene. The car in which the deceased were riding in had left the scene immediately the other two vehicles arrived," he said.
He, however, said the shootings at Mutoho were strange.
"We currently don't have any clue about what happened. We also suspect the bodies were killed elsewhere and dumped in our area. Sincerely we are in the darkness but we are investigating," he said.
Mr Kanda said officers were dispatched to the area and processed the scene with a view of gaining clues on what exactly transpired.
Murang'a South DCI boss Mr John Kanda.
Photo credit: Pool
He said the bodies did not have personal identification documents to help in ascertaining their details.
"We will rely on missing-person reports, relatives coming forward as well as postmortem reports to identify them and get a clearer picture of how they died," he said.
Mutoho village has in the recent past been a security problem with runaway gangs staging murders, armed robberies on area business interests, muggings and extortion.
The area has also been a danger spot for motorists and boda boda riders who have been reporting of carjackings and motorcycle thefts.
In a recent incident, a 20-year-old woman was found gang raped and murdered and a watchman also hacked to death in an incident where raiders stole alcohol from an area bar.
"We have become popular for murders, rapes, defilements and road accidents. The stretch of road between Kenol to Karugia appear to be home to sadistic gangs," said Martin Kambiri, a resident.
The killings come in the wake of national outcry of police officers being suspected of progressing extrajudicial killings, abductions, forced disappearances and unprocedural arrests.
Last Sunday, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua insisted that security organs, especially the DCI, was being used by a wing of government to accomplish illegal and irregular missions.
