A family in Buuri, Meru County is worried that the trail on their kin’s murder may go cold a month after she was stabbed multiple times by two unknown men.
Mr Fred Mwirigi, the father of Yvonne Mwendwa, told the Nation that the police were yet to report any progress on his daughter’s killing, which had “left a hole in his heart”.
A distraught Mr Mwirigi said he had just spoken to his daughter—who was only 23 when she was murdered and had just completed her bachelor’s degree at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (Cuea) and was only awaiting graduation in December—when the sad incident occurred.
Mr Mwirigi said he would talk to his daughter every day after work, adding that, being the only one in the family who had a university education, the family was not only proud of her but had high hopes in the youngest member of the family. On June 1, the day she breathed her last, Yvonne had, as was her routine, clocked off at a pizza joint in Westlands, Nairobi, where she worked. She had then taken a matatu to Rongai, from where she would walk some 200 metres on a murram road to her house.
Shortly after getting off the matatu at 10:30pm, her father called. She told him that she was almost home and would call back shortly. That was to be the very last word Mr Mwirigi would ever hear from his daughter.
A few moments later, Yvonne was reportedly waylaid by two knife-wielding assailants, who stabbed her several times and left her for dead. They did not steal anything from her. They just stabbed her repeatedly and melted into the night.
Yvonne’s neighbour, Mr Bernard Otieno, recalls driving past her barely 70 metres to the gate. It was dark and so he did not recognise her as he drove towards the gate, where the two would-be attackers walked past his vehicle heading in Yvonne’s direction. He recalls that one of them had a carrier bag, which the police believe contained the weapons that were used to kill Yvonne.
As Mr Otieno waited for the watchman to open the gate to his apartment, a shrill scream caught his attention.
He gave chase while shouting at them. The two startled assailants saw Mr Otieno and a couple of other people heading in their direction and fled.
Mr Otieno and the other residents found Yvonne bleeding profusely. They left her in the care of a group of people who had heeded Mr Otieno’s shouts for help and pursued the attackers. They, however, did not manage to catch either of them. Yvonne was helped into the back seat of Mr Otieno’s car and driven to Mt Olive Hospital, where the doctors pronounced her dead on arrival.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres away in Meru, Mr Mwirigi was getting concerned. His daughter had not called him back as she had promised, which was unusual. He tried to call her and got more worried when his calls went unanswered.
As Mr Otieno was leaving the hospital for the nearest police station as he had been directed by the hospital’s management, he noticed that Yvonne’s cellphone was vibrating.
It was her father. Mr Otieno received the call and informed Mr Mwirigi that his daughter was badly injured.
“I could not tell him that she was dead. I handed the phone to the doctors, who broke the news and asked him to come and identify the body,” Mr Otieno said.
Mr Otieno then went to Ongata Rongai Police Station and reported the incident under OB number 02/01/06/2022 and recorded his statement. The next day, Mr Mwirigi arrived in Nairobi and was issued with a post-mortem report that showed his daughter had died of excessive bleeding.
