The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has opened investigations into the death of a six-year-old girl who was at the centre of a protracted custodial battle between her estranged parents.
This is after it emerged that she did not die due to a sudden sickness as reported by her father more than a month ago.
Beverly Mumo’s parents Robinson Musyoki and Naomi Kiamba have, for the past three years, been in and out of court, each seeking to have sole custody of their daughter. She was three when they separated in 2017.
Beverly was living with her father in Mlolongo, Machakos County, when she suddenly died on August 24. In a report filed at Mlolongo police station, the girl had complained of chest pains and was declared dead on arrival at Mater Hospital in Nairobi.
An autopsy done later by four doctors, including government pathologist Johansen Oduor, revealed that she died of traumatic injuries.
The Homicide Department of the DCI, which has taken over the case after two police stations refused to act, now thinks that Beverly was murdered.
The post-mortem report, which the Nation has seen, shows that the girl died a painful death caused by severe loss of blood and internal bleeding. She also had several injuries on the whole body, which pathologists ruled were symptoms of physical abuse over a long period. She had also been defiled in the days leading to her death.
“There are abundant scars with imprints. Injuries are identified on the whole body,” says the post-mortem done on September 2 by a joint team of doctors — Oduor, Edwin Walong, Waithera Mbau and Charles Muturi.
“Main findings at autopsy were recent, and old injuries distributed on all regions are characteristic of physical abuse,” says the report.
All this would have been swept under the carpet had Beverly’s mother, Ms Kiamba, not insisted on pursuing the matter despite several roadblocks set along the way. She reported the matter to the DCI headquarters after police in Mlolongo took time investigating the case.
It is a road that Ms Kiamba had travelled before in her dispute over custody with her ex-husband. For two years, since 2018, police officers in Industrial Area in Nairobi, Mlolongo and Emali dragged their feet in effecting court orders, including a warrant of arrest issued against Mr Musyoki.
According to court documents and correspondence between the two former lovers, Mr Musyoki and Ms Kiamba married in 2010. They had a first child, a boy, in 2011. Beverly was born in 2014, but by then, her parents were having trouble in their marriage.
By 2017, the marriage, solemnised in church, had irretrievably broken down, leading to a separation. Without an agreement on who would take custody of the two children, a case was filed at the Milimani Children’s Court under file number 972/2017.
The court ruled that Ms Kiamba would have total custody of the children, but allow them to be with their father on weekends. In October 2019, Mr Musyoki went back to the court seeking more days with the children.
He wanted to stay with them during school holidays, a wish that was granted. But when he took them in October, Mr Musyoki never returned them to the mother.
In her statement given to homicide detectives, Ms Kiamba said she even sent her ex-husband a text message on December 4, reminding him to return the children. This did not happen.
Ms Kiamba reported this in court, causing H. M. Mbati, the senior resident magistrate at the Children’s Court, to issue a warrant of arrest against Mr Musyoki on January 16.
“It is hereby ordered that the children are rescued by a children’s officer at the location where the children are since the defendant has refused to hand them over to the plaintiff and is in contempt of court orders,” ordered Chief Magistrate Mbati.
This order was circulated to all Children’s Department offices, but it was never effected. It wasn’t the first time that law enforcement agencies were ignoring court orders regarding custody of the children.
An earlier order issued last December 16 by the same court, directing the police to arrest Mr Musyoki was also ignored.
It is believed that during this time, the children had been moved from Industrial Area, where their father works, and used to live in Makueni and then back to Mlolongo.
Whether the police knew these facts but were just sitting on them is the big question. The other question detectives are trying to unravel is who killed Beverly and why?
“No single child should die because of a family wrangle,” said DCI boss George Kinoti while promising to get to the bottom of the matter.
Given the nature of injuries found on Beverly’s body, it is a foregone conclusion by the DCI that the girl was killed.
Even as DCI starts digging into a case that is already six weeks old, there are tell-tale signs that it will not be an easy crime to solve. For instance, why did the father drive all the way from Mlolongo to Mater in South B, to take a child in critical condition to hospital?
