For the first day of his trial, Hillary Kiprotich was wearing a green kitenge dress, a blue jacket, a necklace and earrings, hair neatly plaited. He wore face powder.

He was composed. Afterwards, he declined to comment to reporters.

Kiprotich is transgender, charged with impersonating a female nurse at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital emergency room and forging a hospital badge.

He has pleaded not guilty and is out on Sh50,000 bond.

A MTRH security guard told the court on Tuesday how he discovered the transgender imposter nurse attending to patients in the emergency room.

Rotich Cheruiyot told the court that he acted fast following a tip-off from nurses that an imposter had been spotted at the emergency unit on June 14.

He did not know at the time that 'she' was a 'he'.

He told Eldoret chief magistrate Charles Obulutsa that when he arrived at the emergency unit, he found the suspect, Shieys Chepkosgei — whose real name was Hillary Kiprotich — in full uniform and wearing a badge of the Eldoret hospital.

He was going by the name of Pamela Mulupi.

“When I asked her what she was doing at the emergency section, she told me she was a nurse student from the Kenya Medical Training college Mombasa branch and was posted to the hospital as a volunteer,” Cheruiyot said.

He said that when he investigated her claims, it emerged that she was an imposter who has been volunteering during night shifts at the institution.

“We discovered that he had no official letter from hospital CEO Wilson Aruasa authorising her to volunteer at the facility and the hospital badge was a forgery,” the guard told the court.

The court heard that the suspect has never attended any medical training college in the country and that he had only reached Class 8.

Cheruiyot said he arrested the suspect after alerting the hospital authorities about her activities at the institution before handing her to the Naiberi police station in Moiben sub-county.

The magistrate adjourned the trial to October 7.

The prosecution has lined up five more witnesses from the hospital.