List of Kenyan hit men that have eluded police arrest

Piece by: Mpasho News
Crime
Steyr S9-A1 semi-automatic pistol
Image: Courtesy

Kenyan police are on the lookout for hitmen who have made headlines for killing people in broad daylight and making away with it.

Here is a list of hitmen and the assassinations they carried out and they are yet to be arrested and brought to book for their crimes.

Thika Road assassination 

A garbage truck driver was Thursday night shot and killed in cold blood as he waited for his truck to be filled with litter along Thika Road.

The driver identified by his colleagues as only Maina was driving a lorry contracted by the Kenya National Highway Authority to collect litter on Thika Highway when the incident happened at about 10 pm.

Police and witnesses said the victim was shot at least six times by a gunman who was armed with an AK47 rifle.

Maina had driven the lorry up to the Utalii Tunnel and parked it there waiting for the collected litter to be filled when a salon car pulled behind his truck.

Witnesses who survived the incident said one gunman jumped out and walked to where the driver was and shot him six times before he ran back to the car and drove off.

The other six men who were loading the garbage were not injured in the attack.

A team of police that visited the scene collected six spent cartridges and interrogated the other attendants who said they had picked garbage from the city center and were headed towards Kasarani direction.

The takeaway car had also trailed the truck from the city center, the witnesses said. 

Mirema Drive shooting

Residents of Mirema Drive, off Thika Road, Nairobi, witnessed a shocking incident of a drive-through shooting in the neighborhood that left a man dead in his car.

The body of the man who locals identified as only Njoro alias Berno was discovered in his car on Monday at about 4 pm moments after he had been shot six times in the chest.

The incident happened in front of a young girl that the locals said is the deceased man’s daughter.

According to eyewitness accounts, the unidentified man was dropping his daughter home from school when a white Toyota Premio car approached and blocked his car.

The witness said a man wearing a suit stepped out and shot him four times.

After the first round of shooting, the man went back to his car but came back and shot two more times.

The suspect then drove away leaving behind the dead body as residents scampered for safety.

The victim was also in the company of a lady believed to be the little girl’s mother.

 

 

She had stepped out of the car and the engine was still running then when the shooting happened.

To date, the shooter has never been found.

Robert Ouko's assassination

On 27 January 1990, Robert Ouko, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, left Nairobi as part of a delegation of 83 ministers and officials, among them President Daniel arap Moi, to attend a 'Prayer Breakfast' meeting in Washington DC.

The delegation arrived back in Nairobi on 4 February 1990. On Monday 5 February Ouko met with President Moi, the Japanese Ambassador, the Canadian High Commissioner, Bethuel Kiplagat (Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and Hezekiah Oyugi (Permanent Secretary, Internal Security).

Later that day Ouko traveled to his country residence, a farm in Koru near Kisumu, accompanied by his driver and a bodyguard.

On the night of 12/13 February 1990, Ouko disappeared from his Koru Farm complex near Muhoroni. His housemaid Selina Were Ndalo testified that she "was awakened at about 3 am by a noise similar to a door being slammed shut but sufficiently loud enough to startle her awake" and that she saw a white car turning at the bottom of the minister's driveway before driving away.

Francis Cheruyot, a telephonist at Songoh Office, near the Koru Farm, alleged to Detective Superintendent John Troon of Scotland Yard that on Tuesday 13 February 1990, at about 6 am, he was on duty on the post office telephone switchboard when he saw Hezekiah Oyugi "who was a passenger in a white car containing three other persons" drive past the post office on two occasions but Cheruyot would not make a written statement to this effect. Oyugi was subsequently unable to produce the daily log of his official car.

Ouko's body was found later that day (13 February) at approximately 1 pm by a local herdsboy Joseph Shikuku, at the foot of nearby Got Alila Hill, 2.8 km from Ouko's country home, but although he told local villagers of the find they did not report the fact to the police. Ouko's body was eventually officially discovered on 16 February, following a police search.

Forensic evidence suggested Ouko had been murdered, near where his body was found, killed by a single shot to the head, his right leg broken in two places, and his body left partially burned.

 There was evidence that a gun had been discharged at the scene (although the bullet was never found). A "single caucasian hair" was also found "loosely associated with a partially burnt handkerchief found at the scene".

Items including a gun, a torch, a diesel can, and matches were found nearby. All of the items were subsequently identified as belonging to Ouko and, except the jerrycan, matches, and torch, had usually been kept in his bedroom. News of the murder set off riots in Nairobi.

 

 

Tom Mboya's assasination

Tom Mboya was the Minister for Economic Planning and Development until his death at the age of 39 when he was gunned down on 5 July 1969 on Moi Avenue, Nairobi CBD, after visiting Chaani's Pharmacy.

Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge was convicted for the murder and later hanged. After his arrest, Njoroge asked: "Why don't you go after the big man?"

Due to such statements, suspicions arose that Mboya's shooting was a political assassination.

This means the man who called for the hit has never been arrested. 

Outrage over his assassination led to riots in the major cities of Kenya. President Jomo Kenyatta gave a eulogy at Mboya's requiem mass, saying of his colleague, "Kenya's independence would have been seriously compromised were it not for the courage and steadfastness of Tom Mboya."

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