Police recall day of bullets inside mall

Police who battled terrorists at the Westgate mall on Wednesday for the first time given an account of what happened.

The officers from different units were united at the mall with one mission — to save lives.

When some officers hesitated to confront the well-armed terrorists, these officers boldly went inside the mall.

A photo of six-foot Constable Benjamin Chemijor captured by the media made him an instant celebrity after it went viral on the internet.

Chemijor was seen carrying a tense child with one hand and a gun with the other while running away from heavy gunfire during the attack.

Chemijor for the first time candidly spoke about how he saved more than 40 civilians into safety. “I used all means to rescue civilians,” Chemijor, he said yesterday at Jogoo house, Nairobi.

Chemijor said: “I saw the child in a corner, tensed, exposed and hopeless. As a father, I was moved. What if it was my child, could have I abandoned her there, so I grabbed her and got her out.”

As he ran away, he came under heavy gunfire and the scenes of blood which was devastating for the kid.

“She was comfortable in my arms, she knew I was not brutal by the way I held her, it was that fatherly touch,” Chemijor said on Wednesday.

With the child tightly held in his arms, Chemijor led more than 40 people to safety.

“They knew I was not a bad person. I had a gun and they placed their trust and lives in my arms,” he said.

Chemijor handed the child to officers waiting for people outside the mall and rushed back inside only to meet his colleague groaning in pain on the floor. He had a bullet in the stomach.

“It was hell on earth,” he said. Chemijor has been a policeman for a decade and is a father of a five-year-old son and a four-months old daughter.

'APPEARED DEAD'

What was an ordinary police patrol along Mombasa road turned out to be a life changing experience at Westgate for Chemijor.

Besides Chemijor, Sergeant Adan Iya, a driver, also told how he saved lives. He crawled up to a helpless woman who had two children and under heavy gunfire lead them to safety.

“A radio call alert is what led us into Westgate mall,” he said.

Using his senior’s jacket, Adan appeared like an ordinary civilian. Adan went inside the mall and spotted a woman cuddling a child. “Although they were lying down and appeared dead, I could tell they were alive because the woman kept comforting the child who was terrified,” he recalled.

When he approached the woman and the children, they refused to move as they thought he was one of the terrorists. “After a lot of convincing they agreed to leave”, Adan, who became a policeman 26 year ago recalled. The video of that rescue, shot by photo journalist Joseph Mathenge, was seen around the world

Another photo that went viral was that of Sergeant Tawfiq Baya. He was seen carrying a little child with a shoe in her hands.

Baya says he did what he had to do. “The photo is not important for me, the most important thing is to save a life,” he said.
Inspector Stephen Lelei in charge of the Kabete police station led officers and issued instructions. He devised a rescue plan in which hundreds of civilians who could have fallen in the hail of bullets from the terrorists were saved.

Floor by floor, Lelei coordinated the rescue mission that angered the terrorists. “They now wanted to shoot me to destabilize the group, but the pillars inside the mall saved me,” he said.