A pistol belonging to the National Police Service was recovered from three men who had been lynched by a mob in Nairobi’s Marurui area.
The men had attacked and robbed a Mpesa shop and tried to escape prompting the owner to chase them while seeking the help of the public on Saturday night.
Police and witnesses said a gang of three had attacked one Joseph Nganga at about 10 pm at his shop near a petrol station at gunpoint and robbed him of the cash and a laptop before they jumped onto a waiting motorcycle and sped off.
The owner then jumped onto a car and chased them on the Northern bypass towards Kiambu which prompted a mob to stop the three on the motorcycle before they stoned them to death.
Police who arrived at the scene said they recovered a Jericho pistol belonging to the service. It is not clear if any of the victims is a police officers.
Efforts to identify the three lynched men and establish the source of the pistol were ongoing, said Kasarani police boss Peter Mwanzo.
Police said the pistol had nine bullets at the time it was recovered.
The officers who attended the scene said they did not recover the money that had been stolen from the victim.
The bodies were taken to the mortuary ahead of planned identification and postmortem. It is not unusual for police to be involved in crime.
Police discourage mob lynching and term it criminal.
Police want those nabbed by the public to be surrendered to the authorities for processing.
Cases of mob lynching have been on the rise in the past few days. Police records show up to two cases are reported daily, especially in the city.
This, according to other scholars is an indication of a broken criminal justice system and calls for urgent address.
Woman arrested after wheeling dead uncle into a bank to sign a loan