A Kibera court on Monday, November 14, sentenced two men to life imprisonment for violently attacking and robbing the bodyguard of Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu in 2017.
James Wachira Kibe and Eric Njuguna Kamau are accused of violently robbing Police Constable Titus Musyoka of a pistol and a magazine loaded with fifteen rounds of ammunition.
The prosecution told the court that during the attack that took place along Ngong Road on October 24, 2017, the accused persons shot and wounded the guard. He survived.
While sentencing the duo on Monday, Kibera Senior Principal Magistrate Esther Boke said the two, who had denied all the charges, were cruel, barbaric and not remorseful.
“The offence was committed brutally, the accused person shot the complainants with a firearm and they were not firearm holders,” Boke said.
“The two are dangerous people who need to be kept away from society and by doing so we will protect the community.”
The magistrate found the accused persons guilty a fortnight ago.
Boke said the prosecution led by Esther Kerubo had proved beyond doubt that the two accused persons were involved in the incident that left Musyoka with serious injuries.
The third accused person, Everyncy Khalifywa Shivachi alias Evans Khalif Shivachi, was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.
The magistrate, while freeing the suspect, said the prosecution failed to convince the court that Shivachi was the owner of the vehicle spotted at the scene of crime on the day Musyoka was attacked.
Mwilu's bodyguard testifies
In his testimony in court, the complainant, Musyoka, told the presiding magistrate that on the day he was attacked he had just left the Supreme Court driving a blue Prado and had picked up a child from Montessori Academy and dropped him home.
He then proceeded to Coptic Area Hospital where he was to buy flowers from a long-term friend, one Kiragu.
“I left the Supreme Court and went to Montessori Academy to pick a child. I arrived at the garden and I found Kiragu and his two employees but Kiragu informed me that the plants I wanted to purchase (bottom brass and others) were few. He advised me that they were present at the next garden,” Constable Musyoka said.
Musyoka painfully recounted that as Kiragu and his employees loaded the car with the plants, he heard gunshots and before knowing it, he had been shot in the jaw and was bleeding.
“I asked them how many they had loaded when I heard a gunshot. I heard the second gunshot and found I had been shot and was bleeding in the left jaw and the left shoulder,” Mwilu's guard recounted.
To save his life, he lay down and pretended to be dead.
He claimed to have seen one of the robbers fleeing with his gun.
"A man came and picked my gun and fled on a motorcycle," Musyoka said.
"I told the garden owner that I had been shot in the shoulder. I requested him to take me to the hospital.”
In the court judgment, the magistrate said the police had placed the accused persons at the scene of the crime.
The magistrate also noted that the gun said to have been stolen from the victim was recovered from the suspects at a separate robbery incident in Thika, within Kiambu county.
In his mitigation, the first accused person pleaded with the court to allow him to go home and start a family, saying he was arrested before marrying.
"Allow me to go home and make a family, I was arrested before I married," the accused person pleaded.
