For the past 24 hours, Susan Wanjiku has been trapped in a nightmare she can't escape.
Sleep refuses to come, stolen by the horror of how she lost her husband, Gilbert Kinyua—the man she shared 11 years of love, laughter, and struggle with.
Susan Wanjiku (right) with her husband Gilbert Kinyua, who was tragically murdered while in his hospital bed at Kenyatta National Hospital.
Photo credit: Pool
The weight of his brutal death presses down on her, each moment replaying in her mind like a scene she desperately wishes had never happened—because, in every sense, it is something out of a horror movie.
"When I saw him, I was too shocked to speak. There was a pool of blood on the bed and his clothes. The way his neck had been cut—it was from side to side, and it was not a straight cut. There were marks of struggle, as if someone had used a blunt object. And they seem to have had time," Susan, a 40-year-old tea hawker at Juakali in Dandora, tells Nation.Africa at her nearby home.
Her husband was situated in the corner of Ward 7B on the seventh floor. The cubicle housed two patients, and the entire ward accommodated seven.
There was also a pastor who had introduced himself to Susan, offering her words of encouragement.
Another patient had become a trusted ally, assisting in caring for her husband during her absences, Susan said.
“How could nobody have heard anything? Not even the nurses at the station or other patients?" she asks.
These are the questions that she and Kinyua's family are asking but without answers. As part of the investigation, KNH said that they were cooperating with law enforcement authorities and have since launched an internal investigation to determine what happened with detectives from the homicide investigations bureau pursuing the case.
"It is as if our children know that something has happened to their father. They keep saying that they want to see him," she says as she wipes tears from her eyes.
“How could one get murdered at a facility like KNH? In my view, this was an inside job especially now that it happened after the nurse's visits and before 6 am.”
Emotional Susan Wanjiku, wife of Gilbert Kinyua, who was tragically murdered while in his hospital bed at Kenyatta National Hospital during an interview at their home in Dandora, Nairobi on February 8, 2025.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
These are some of the questions that Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) boss Mohammed Amin and homicide detectives will be trying to answer in the coming days as investigations into Kinyua's murder begun.
Susan is one of four people scheduled to give statements to DCI investigators. Also lined up for questioning is a male patient who was in the same room as Kinyua on the fateful day.
However, the patient, who is said to be recovering from a mental illness, could not record his statement on Saturday until a psychiatrist attending to him cleared the investigators.
Police believe that this patient could provide the crucial details that will help unravel this murder.
Emotional Susan Wanjiku, wife of Gilbert Kinyua, who was tragically murdered while in his hospital bed at Kenyatta National Hospital during an interview at their home in Dandora, Nairobi on February 8, 2025.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
Homicide investigators on Saturday, February 8 visited the ward where the murder took place for the second day in a row in search of fresh clues.
Crime scene personnel also reviewed CCTV footage from the previous nights, but are yet to find any credible clues to the murder, a source close to the investigation told Nation.Africa.
A kitchen knife dropped on the roof of the hospital's first floor, which is believed to be the murder weapon, is among the evidence crime scene investigators have collected for fingerprint analysis.
There is also the question of how the murder could have taken place in such a heavily guarded place, if the possibility of another suspect, who was neither a patient nor a member of the hospital staff, is to be believed.
The hospital is well protected: By private security guards from a contracted company, the hospital's own security personnel and police officers from the Kenyatta National Hospital Police Station.
On this Saturday morning when we meet her at her Dandora home, the 40-year-old should have been up early, tending to her tea-selling business at Jua Kali, near the stadium, just as she had for years.
Since 2012, when her husband fell ill, she has been the family's primary provider.
She had always hoped that one day, she would tell a different story—the story of Kinyua’s recovery, of a battle fought and won.
But now, she finds herself telling a different story, that of murder and loss.
Emotional Susan Wanjiku, wife of Gilbert Kinyua, who was tragically murdered while in his hospital bed at Kenyatta National Hospital during an interview at their home in Dandora, Nairobi on February 8, 2025.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
For weeks, she and her family had taken turns visiting Kinyua, who had been bedridden in Ward 7B since December 11, 2024.
It was an expensive routine, but they managed by rotating their visits, ensuring he was never alone for too long.
But the morning of Friday, February 7 shattered everything.
Instead of preparing for her usual visit, Susan’s phone rang with a call from the hospital—one that would leave her grieving, confused, and utterly lost.
"He was at the neurological ward and was under medication to treat bed sores and wounds. On that day, he told me to ask the doctors if he would need a grafting procedure or not. Then I fed him some blended beetroot and mango juice. I encouraged him that he would soon be home with our two boys; aged 11 and nine years. As we were parting ways, he requested that I bring him some ointment to apply around the wound area. Then he requested that I pass his greetings to our sons and said we live in peace," she says.
The conversation, that she has been replaying in her mind since was nothing out of the ordinary in her telling. “He was a social man, loving and kind. He occasionally called me an angel."
Susan married her husband on February 26, 2011.
Back then, he was strong, healthy, and full of dreams.
As a water technician in Nairobi, he was determined to build a better life for his family. Having been raised single-handedly by his mother with his other siblings, he often told her that he would work hard to give his family the stability that he didn't have in his childhood.
She pulls out a photograph of him, vibrant and full of life—a stark contrast to the man she had been caring for over the past decade.
First, he experienced paralysis of his right hand making it difficult for him to work.
What followed was a relentless cycle of hospital visits, moving from one facility to another, draining their resources and forcing them to hold fundraisers. He endured multiple hospital admissions, each bringing a new, devastating diagnosis.
At one point, doctors said it was Parkinson’s. Then, in March, it was Fournier’s gangrene. But by the time he was admitted to KNH, the focus had shifted entirely. “They told us he didn’t have the previous diagnoses,” she recalls. “At that point, they were only treating the wounds.”
When the call came on Friday morning, Susan was making her rounds, moving from place to place selling tea. She barely had time to think as she answered.
The voice on the other end introduced himself as a doctor from KNH. “You are urgently needed here. There's an emergency,” he told her.
Her heart quickened. “Is something wrong? Has his health deteriorated?” she asked. But death? That thought never crossed her mind. Her husband had been improving.
"Who would hold a grudge against such a sick man? And he never said that his life was in danger. The only thing we ever wondered about was this mysterious sickness," she says.
She goes on: "All I want is justice for my husband and the father to my children. Who killed him? Why? And why didn't anyone protect him at a facility I entrusted to?”
