The family of a man charged with impersonating Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet has demanded thorough investigations into his death at the Industrial Area Prison in Nairobi.
John Kibowen Cheboiwo, who had been in remand for five weeks, reportedly collapsed on June 15 and was pronounced dead on arrival at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).
Commissioner of Prisons Isaiah Osugo said the inmate died at the KNH and not at the Prison, adding that the matter was under investigation.
Cheboiwo’s mother, Jane Anyango, said she was informed of her second-born child’s death on June 17, two days after the incident.
“I was told that the body had been taken to City Mortuary. I went there and found it. The records there indicated ‘sudden death’,” Ms Anyango said.
“We decided to take the body to Chiromo Mortuary and have another pathologist conduct an autopsy,” the distraught mother of five said.
She said she wondered why the autopsy at the City Mortuary was not completed and thus decided to have a second one.
“At Chiromo Mortuary, government pathologist Johansen Oduor did an autopsy and said that Cheboiwo’s neck had injuries on the left side, part of his brain was swollen, and there were blood clots on the tips of his fingers,
“It does not add up that a person who collapsed could have signs of strangulation and such injuries,” Ms Anyango said.
Dr Oduor told the Nation, “There was some haemorrhage on the neck muscles, a brain oedema and peripheral cyanosis,”
A brain oedema results from excess accumulation of fluid in the intracellular or extracellular spaces in the brain, and can be caused by brain trauma.
Peripheral cyanosis refers to the accumulation of blood on the tips of the hands and feet. Dr Oduor says it is usually caused by low oxygen levels in the red blood cells or problems getting oxygenated blood to the body.
“I just want thorough investigations conducted. I want closure. I want to know what happened to my son,” Ms Anyango said as she recorded a statement at the Industrial Area Police Station.
Her son who pursued a Degree in Computer Science at the Kenyatta University cleared his studies in December last year and graduated last month, as his case was active in court.
He had been charged with impersonating IGP Boinnet and the then Directorate of Criminal Investigations boss Ndegwa Muhoro on Facebook way back in 2016.
The prosecution alleged that Kibowen opened a false Facebook account in the name of Mr Muhoro and defrauded unsuspecting Kenyans of over Sh500,000. The student was accused of pretended that he would fast-track investigations on their cases.
He was also accused of obtaining Sh100, 750 from one James Gakobo Muriithi by pretending that he would help him get details of his father’s estate from the Land ministry.
He was also alleged to have obtained Sh425,000 from Daniel Otieno Adero on diverse dates between December 28 2015 and January 6, 2016.
Friends and family mourned Kibowen online, with his brother Oscar Cheboiwo saying, “You taught me to believe. To believe that relations are not made by blood... they are made by heart. You will know them right when you have no idea where your life is heading towards,”
“You taught me that friends are not only for the good times... the real ones are those who stay with us at the bad times and they pull you out of it.
I learnt that our parents have that unconditional and limitless love for us that we often let go, ignore. Our pain, our happiness, our down fall, our rise is theirs. Theirs rightfully and completely. I faced the loveliest person in my life, who taught me to love with an open heart... with no expectations.
That to love someone we do not need to be loved back. That love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, and no name. Love is itself enough, complete and falling in love is ironically the best fall,” he wrote in part.
