A rocky three-year relationship between Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier Kennedy Oloo and his wife culminated in tragedy with death of the woman and the soldier's arrest.
At the centre of the domestic rift were claims of infidelity leveled by 26-year-old Leah Terewa against Oloo, who is stationed at 81 Tank Battalion in Lanet Barracks, Nakuru county.
However, the situation took a turn for the worst on the night of June 11, 2020, when the soldier confessed to siring a child with another woman.
The revelation drove Terewa to the brink, especially after Oloo proposed bringing the child and its mother to their residence in Kiamunyeki in, Lanet, Bahati sub-county.
The following morning, Oloo reported a suicide case to Lanet Police Station, setting the stage for a murder case pending before the High Court in Nakuru.
During a recent testimony before Justice Samuel Mohochi, detective Evans Mbane from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation's Bahati office shared details of Mr Oloo's report made on June 12, 2020, at 11am.
According to Mr Oloo, Terewa locked herself in a bedroom and hanged herself with bedsheets after a quarrel the previous night.
However, police investigations raised serious questions about the suicide theory.
The issues include how Terewa tied the bedsheets to a roof approximately three meters high, why her body was found on the floor and why the beige bedsheet showed no signs of stretching.
The accused also produced a ladder when asked to do so by the detectives which the police took as evidence that he had knowledge of where it was.
Oloo's explanation, including promptly producing a ladder upon request, raised suspicions about his involvement in his wife's death.
“I interrogated the accused and he told me he had quarrel with his wife the previous night before she locked herself in the bedroom where she hung herself,” said Mr Mbane.
Moreover, Oloo took three hours to report the incident to the police, located only 300 metres away, and failed to inform neighbours about his wife's apparent suicide.
Further investigations implicated Oloo in Terewa's death, leading to his arrest on June 18, 2020.
A subsequent post-mortem ruled out suicide, confirming strangulation as the cause of death.
“The pathologist said there was no gravitational pull and no visibility of hanging and the same was confirmed by the pathologist representing the accused person,” said Mr Mbane.
Mr Oloo, out on a Sh500,000 bond, faces murder charges, with the hearing set for February 7, 2024.
