Boy, 14, held over the murder of friend after jumper found at scene
Emanuel Kibet Kipkemboi was reported missing on the evening of Saturday, March 26 after the family failed to find him.
A 14-year-old boy is in police custody after his hooded jumper was found inside an empty house where his friend who had gone missing two weeks ago was found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances that have shocked the residents of Kisaju, Kajiado County.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) was on Wednesday evening allowed by a court in Kajiado to continue holding the boy in order to complete investigations on the murder of Emmanuel Kibet Kipkemboi.
Three adults at Jamii Bora estate, located eight kilometres off the Nairobi-Namanga highway at Kisaju, positively identified the brown jumper that was taken by police from the scene where Kibet’s body was found, as belonging to his friend.
The abandoned house in Kisaju Jamii Bora Park, Kajiado County where the body of 11-year-old Emmanuel Kipkemboi was found. His friend aged 14 is in police custody over the killing.
Kibet, 11, a Grade Five pupil at Sathya Sai School, who lived with his father until his death in January, went missing on Sunday, March 27, while playing football outside his mother’s house at Jamii Bora estate.
Frantic search
According to his family; Kibet who was an ardent football player, had never been involved in any trouble or pulled a disappearing act before. Yet that Sunday morning, he disappeared, prompting a frantic neighbourhood search for him.
Jamii Bora estate, which was originally planned as a low-cost housing project for Nairobi slum dwellers in the dusty plains of Isinya, has over the years been vacated as home owners moved back to city, leaving hundreds of empty structures that are falling apart.
When Kibet disappeared, neighbours started combing through all the empty houses, hoping to find a clue on his whereabouts, but there was no sign of him on the first day. His friends who were last seen with him claimed they did not know where he went.
Reported his disappearance
Fearing that something bad had happened to her son, Mercy Chepkorir Kipsang reported his disappearance at the Isinya Sub County Police headquarters, more than six kilometres away. She then went back home where the search for Kibet continued.
After three days of searching, a report was filed at the police station by a Mr Kevin Monai, a village elder at the estate, that Kibet’s body had been found in one of the empty houses.
Eleven years Emanuel Kibet Kipkemboi was found murdered at Jamii bora estate few days after he was reported missing.
The house, number N4/143, is located three rows from where Kibet’s family lives. A woman who was involved in the search, and who lives near the house where the body was found, told the Nation that residents searched the property twice, but never went through all the rooms.
“Nobody ever thought that the boy could be inside this house because it is too close to where the parents stay. We only discovered on the third day after one of the women in the search decided to go to all bedrooms,” said the woman.
Scene unsecured
The house, a two bedroomed dilapidated structure with an auctioneer’s notice on the door showing that the occupants vacated it in 2019, was at the time of the Nation’s visit on Wednesday, still unsecured by the police.
Inside, blood was splattered on the walls of all the rooms, including on the exterior of the bottom rail of one of the windows of a bedroom adjacent to the sitting room.
Additionally, the Nation found a handprint in blood whose size fits the right hand of an adult on one of the walls leading to a second bedroom where the boy’s body was found in a pool of blood on the floor. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom had blood splattered on all the walls.
Hooded jumper
It also had an old radio, pieces of clothing, shoes and other worn-out household items. It is in this room that police picked a hooded jumper that neighbours say belongs to the 14-year-old boy who is being held by police.
Police also found a hammer, chisel, red Sandak shoe and a red Liverpool football jersey.
“Police officers who rushed to the scene, led by the DCIO, found that the body had a deep cut on the right side of the head,” Mr Ancent Kaloki, the Isinya Sub-County Police chief told the Nation.
“The victim had an Infinix mobile phone that is still missing and it is believed it might have been stolen by whoever murdered the victim,” said the police chief.
Bad behaviour
Kibet’s family suspects that the boy in police custody was involved in the murder. They said his bad behaviour is known throughout Jamii Bora. The suspect is a class seven pupil at Kaputei primary school.
“The boy comes from Kayole and I suspect he has some gang influence,” claimed Kibet’s uncle, Mr Fadhili Kipsang.
Still, so many questions remain unanswered, starting from why the house where Kibet’s body was found is not secured, yet it contains several items that might have been used in the murder, such as a metal rod and rocks covered with blood.
