Cullen Maina.
At 10am on Monday morning, Kasarani Police Station is unusually busy with officers, some in full 'maandamano' gear, batons in hand.
The mood is sombre as a huge crowd swells in the belly of the station.
Teresa Gathoni stands outside waiting for Eddie, who we learn is her husband.
“I am Cullen Maina’s sister. We found his visibly brutalised body lying on the cold floor of City Mortuary last Sunday. Officials there told us that police from Kasarani Police Station took it there on June 10 2024,” she begins, trying to hold back the tears.
Her husband Eddie is trying to get documentation from Deputy OCPD Hassan Bashir, who tells us he has been instructed to process their case so that they can go back to City Mortuary with a signed authorisation for a post-mortem to be carried out.
When we get hold of Eddie, he's frustrated.
“Whatever we are being told here doesn’t make sense. The OB reads my brother-in-law, a 24-year-old, died as a result of a hit-and-run by an unknown car at a place called Car-wash in Kasarani along Thika road on 10th June at 10pm when the last person he was actually with said that he left Ngara at 10.30pm!” he said.
If you are wondering who Cullen is and why his story matters, let me help you.
Remember the viral missing person poster that's been doing the rounds on the internet, with social media users claiming that the young media student went missing after attending the anti-Finance Bill protests on June 25, 2024? This is him.
“When we saw his body, a huge chunk of flesh was missing from his chest area. No one is telling us what actually happened,” said his brother-in-law.
So what exactly happened to Cullen? In an exclusive interview with the Nation, his classmate Joseph Maina, who was the third last person to see him on June 9, 2024, a Sunday, said they had planned to attend a 'side hustle' the next day at 10am. After that, his phone was switched off and then he did not turn up.
“We spent time around Thika Road Mall (TRM) that day and in the evening at around 6.45pm, he boarded a matatu from TRM to Ngara with a male friend who was going to Ruai because Cullen was going to meet a female friend who is our school mate. She was the last person to see him alive,” he told the Nation.
Joseph describes Cullen as a very quiet person who liked to keep to himself.
The deceased had recently moved to Nairobi from Mombasa after his internship.
“He came from Mombasa on June 3 to look for a place to stay," Teresa said.
For this reason, according to the deceased's friend, a fellow student at KCA University, the young man would sometimes stay at his house or hang out with other schoolmates.
His sister told the Nation that the last time she communicated with her brother was "recently" on Instagram. Little did she know that the silence that followed would last forever.
Joseph said that he would later call the female friend Cullen had visited, and she said that he left her house in Ngara at about 10.30pm that night.
"His female friend told me he told her he was going to Kahawa West," Joseph said, adding that no one heard from Cullen from there.
Henry Gathogo, also Cullen’s friend, disclosed that at first they thought it was his usual character of going silent and ‘hibernating’.
"We thought he would disappear and then resurface as he usually does, but then after three to four weeks we decided to make a 'missing person' poster."
Despite endless appeals on social media, they made no progress and resorted to going from mortuary to mortuary in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, to look for him.
On Saturday, they visited the Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital (KUTRRH) morgue, but Cullen's body was not there.
Sleepless, nervous and terrified of what might have happened to their friend, his three classmates went to City Mortuary at 6.30pm where their worst fears were confirmed.
"We met an employee there and we showed him photos of Cullen and he promised to look at the bodies one by one using the pictures we sent him as a reference point. He is the one who actually found him and then asked friends and family to go there and confirm," Joseph told the Nation.
Cullen's body was not among the bodies taken to City Mortuary on June 25, 2024 when we checked the records.
"We asked him to check the entire month of June because they are kept according to the dates the police bring them in. The records showed that his body was brought in on June 10," he told the Nation.
Cullen's mother, who lives in Kirinyaga County, told the Nation: “I am heartbroken, sleepless and in so much pain. He was my last born. I want to know what happened to my child, I want to know who killed my baby and why.”
After waiting for six hours at Kasarani police station, the OCPD refused to talk to us about what happened, how the hit-and-run happened or if there were any witnesses.
"We have attended to the deceased’s family because they want to be able to do a post-mortem on the body," the OCPD said, after which he was hastily driven away.
As the Nation left the police station, Eddie and Teresa headed back to City Mortuary to make plans for the post-mortem.
At this point, only science could give them answers and perhaps some closure.
