Makueni babe crawls to safety after hubby slashes her with panga leaves her for dead

Piece by: star.writer
Lifestyle

Pretty face, chocolate-coloured skin, bulbous nose, dazzling hair and smiling eyes with fluttering eyelashes.

This was Irene Ndinda, 20, before her estranged husband descended on her, beating her and slashing her all over with a panga.

The six-month pregnant woman is recuperating at Makueni Mother and child hospital nursing head, hand, leg, face and mouth injuries inflicted on her by her lover.

She has several stitches on her head, and bandages on both her hands.

She escaped death by a whisker on September 26, 2019.

A senior police officer in Makueni who asked for anonymity said the police were informed by good samaritans of a woman lying helpless on the road.

"When we rushed to the scene on Friday, we found a woman with serious cuts beside the road. She was in pain and seemed to be regaining her consciousness," the officer said.

Upon investigations, they discovered the attacker had slashed her and dumped her in a forest in Mbiuni, Makueni after he thought he had killed her.

"The woman crawled to the road for help at around noon the following day, she did not have clothes," the officer added.

They rushed her to Makindu Hospital, Makueni, for treatment and then called her mother.

Ndinda's mother, Priscilla Kimeu, describes the sight of her daughter lying in bed as gruesome.

"I was shocked when I saw my daughter disfigured to a point where she could not be recognised. Her hands, face, mouth, legs had been slashed. She was swollen. Her tooth had been removed and lay in bed in pain," Priscilla said.

The woman was later moved to Makueni Referral Hospital for further treatment before being transferred to Makueni's Mother and Child Hospital.

PERFECT LOVE

Ndinda met her lover in 2018 while she was studying.

At first, it was a fling. But it blossomed into an intense love affair and they moved in together in 2018.

"Five months in their stay we never heard of any conflicts but on the six month into the relationship, Ndinda always went back to my mother's home claiming she had been assaulted by the husband," Eric Kimeu, elder brother to the victim, told the Star.

After several trips to her mother's home, the family advised her to move away from her husband completely.

This year, she moved in permanently with her two-year-old child to her mother's home.

Kimeu said that on that fateful day, her sister went to pick her remaining clothes from her husband's home and on her way back to her mother's home, the man attacked her.

Mbiuni area chief James Muithya said that the husband has been arrested and remanded.

"He was arrested a day after the incident. His motorcycle that had blood is in custody serving as evidence," he said.

According to the mother, Priscilla Mueni, the attacker ambushed her as she was returning home from the market, slashed her with the machete leaving her unconscious before escaping on a motorcycle.

“He carried her and dumped her in a thicket thinking she was dead but after she gained consciousness at the middle of the night, she crawled to nearby homesteads where she narrated to the owners what had befallen her,” said Mueni.

“She had chosen to quit the abusive marriage long before but the husband has been unsuccessfully persuading her to go back back,” said the victim’s mother.

She wants justice for her daughter.

LYNDSAY NYAWIRA/The Star