Witney Atieno, 19, the Form Four student at Nakuru Central Secondary School who was shot by a police officer on June 12, 2022.
For the past three years, Leonard Ogunyo has been a familiar figure at the Nakuru Law Courts.
By the time the morning sun spills through the narrow courthouse windows, Mr Ogunyo is already there seated quietly on a wooden bench along the corridors.
A matatu tout in Nakuru City, he can easily be mistaken for an ordinary litigant given his frequent presence in the halls of justice.
To many, he looks like just another Kenyan seeking redress. But Ogunyo is not there over a land dispute or a traffic offence.
He is there because his daughter Whitney Atieno is dead and the person who killed her is yet to be charged in court, years later.
Witney Atieno, 19, the Form Four student at Nakuru Central Secondary School who was shot by a police officer on June 12, 2022.
And every time he shows up, one phrase remains constant: the matter has been “pushed to a further date.”
“My daughter Whitney Atieno was shot by a senior police officer but despite everything, nothing seems to move. My plea is simple: let the court decide. Let judges determine whether the officer was at fault and take action. She posed no threat and was not involved in any criminal activity. They just shot her,” Mr Ogunyo told the Daily Nation in an interview.
On June 12, 2022, the life of 19-year-old Whitney who was then a secondary school student in Lake View Estate, Nakuru City was snuffed out by a single bullet fired by what her family describes as a trigger-happy police officer.
During the incident, another student, Ruth Waithera, 18, sustained serious gunshot wounds.
Atieno, a Form Four student at Nakuru Central Secondary School and Waithera from nearby Flamingo Secondary School had visited a salon to braid their hair when they were shot.
Chief Inspector Erick Mukone Wekesa, then the Bondeni Officer Commanding Station (OCS), was leading a police raid in Lake View Estate to flush out suspected members of the outlawed Confirm gang when he allegedly shot Atieno, killing her on the spot while Waithera was left nursing serious hand injuries.
The incident sparked outrage and protests among residents.
An autopsy conducted at Nakuru Level Five Hospital mortuary on June 23, 2022 revealed that Atieno died from massive bleeding caused by a single gunshot wound to her chest.
Government pathologist Dr Titus Ngulungu noted that the bullet entered through the abdomen and exited through the lower back.
“The morphology of the wound suggested a close-range discharge estimated to be not more than 50 metres,” he noted.
“As a result of my examination, I have formed the opinion that the cause of death was massive blood loss due to a single gunshot to the abdomen,” Dr Ngulungu concluded.
Whitney was buried on July 2, 2022, in Ukwala Sub-County, Siaya County.
Three years later, the senior officer linked to the fatal shooting remains free despite the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) recommending his arrest and prosecution.
“Despite enough evidence, the officer has never been arraigned in court. We are yet to get justice as a family,” Mr Ogunyo said.
“My daughter was bright, hardworking and disciplined. She could have joined university. We had so much hope in her.”
‘Dad, don’t cry’
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (Ipoa) took over investigations and forwarded the file to its legal committee in Nairobi.
“We did our work. The committee later forwarded the file to the DPP to determine who should be charged,” said Rift Valley Ipoa coordinator Josephat Kaimenyi.
On October 3, 2024, the DPP recommended that Chief Inspector Wekesa be charged with murder. However, little progress has been made. The Daily Nation learnt that on January 29, 2025, the DPP recalled the file for review.
Mr Ogunyo narrated that he still vividly remembers June 12, 2022 when his daughter was shot dead. He had returned from work around 4pm and found his younger daughters at home while Whitney had gone to the salon.
One daughter asked what they would have for supper. With no money that day, he told her they would have ugali and vegetables.
Minutes later, she ran back screaming “Whitney has been shot!”
Ogunyo rushed outside barefoot where a crowd had gathered and he was told Whitney had been taken to hospital. He proceeded to Bondeni Police Station to report the incident but was told to wait.
It was then that he walked to Nakuru Teaching and Referral Hospital. Inside one of the wards, he found doctors frantically trying to save his daughter's life.
“About 10 minutes later, she opened her eyes, looked at me and said, ‘Dad, don’t cry,’ before closing them again,” Ogunyo recalled tearfully.
Around 7:30pm, doctors asked the family to leave Whitney under observation.
But just as Ogunyo reached the gate, he was called back urgently and informed that Whitney had died.
“I did not believe it. I walked to the bed and looked at my daughter. She was only three months away from sitting her KCSE examinations,” he said.
The family expected swift action but instead encountered silence and bureaucracy in finding justice for her late daughter.
Court records show that summons were issued for plea-taking on October 16, 2024, but the accused did not appear.
While requesting more time, a lawyer representing the accused at the time said his client was unwell and was scheduled for heart surgery.
The matter was deferred and on January 29, 2026 the court was informed that the DPP had recalled the file for review.
A senior DPP officer confirmed “the file is still under review.”
Whitney’s younger sister, Stacey Ogunyo, now at Maseno University, says the family has never recovered.
“Life has not been easy since she left us. We miss her daily. My father drinks a lot, perhaps to forget,” she said.
