The mother of the teenager suspected of the gory murder of former Nairobi Hospital acting finance director Eric Maigo has come out to explain the troubled past of her daughter, whom she said was a petty thief that often skipped school and had ran into a lot of trouble with her.
"After she reached Standard Four at Olympic Primary School, she became difficult to handle. She would pretend she was leaving the house for school but I came to realise she would change into home-clothes somewhere along the way and would go on expeditions in nearby Toi market. She would then come back home in the evening saying she was from school," her mother said.
The suspect, who was recorded as a minor, but whom the mother says was born in 2003, and was not a minor, was remanded for 21 days pending investigations.
Mr Maigo's body was found in a pool of blood in his house, after he was stabbed 25 times on the morning of September 15, 2023.
The DCI later released the suspect’s photographs depicting her to have been in the compound near that of the deceased and who escaped by jumping over a barbed wall.
The DCI branded her as the prime suspect in the murder, sending shockwaves of disbelief across the country, and she was apprehended on Tuesday at Olympics estate in Kibra.
Her mother disputes saying of all the things her errant daughter can do, murder is the least.
"About that story of murdering that man, she has denied. I asked her and she denied and I support her too. I don't believe she can murder anyone".
Adding that she doubts whether her daughter owns a phone, she said she would love to get informed on how as DCI claims, "my daughter met that man and how they ended together in his bedroom".
Her mother added that "my prayer is that she be taken to a psychiatrist to ascertain whether she is okay in the mind".
The DCI in it's public information about the murder exposed her to have worn a red checkered shirt and a grey pair of animal-print pants that were later found abandoned in a wooden shack in Kibra’s Bombolulu village.
The mother poured her heart out about the hell it has been trying to positively develop her character.
“I had even warned her that she would no longer live with me. The day she was away for a full night—the night Mr Maigo was murdered—I had demanded that I take her to the chief’s camp and disclose where she had been,” the mother, whom we cannot name for legal reasons, said.
Telling it all to NTV’s investigative desk, she complained that “though my only daughter, she had started running short of self-respect”.
Though her mother’s opinion does not count in the judicial process the suspect is undergoing, the criminal culpability or lack of it thereof lying squarely in the way due process will turn out, however, the huge public interest the case has attracted has seen her parent come out to give the country insights into the now celebrity in the odd circumstances.
She disclosed that there was a time she returned home carrying a big-bag full of clothes “and I told her no, you must have stolen these. You must take me to where you got them from”.
"My daughter has stolen many items including a jerry can of cooking salad from a local shop. There was also a time she went to Toi market and returned carrying a bag full of clothes," she said.
She says it reached a point where “my sister who resides in Nairobi’s Kayole estate came and took her with her and enrolled her to Ruai Primary School from where she was accused of stealing Sh19, 000 belonging to her teachers”.
Lucky to have landed an academic sponsorship from a well-wisher of foreign nationality, where at Olympic Primary school she became difficult to manage while at class Four, she started idling about the hood.
On the night Mr Maigo was murdered, the suspect, according to her mother, was in the house.
“We had quarrelled earlier over food that had gone missing while she was the only one in the house. I chased her out the house but she came back later and found we had cooked and eaten,” she said.
