University student who went missing on Saturday found dead

A family from Mpeketoni in Lamu County is mourning the death of their 20-year-old son, a student at Technical University of Mombasa (TUM), who was on Wednesday, January 22, found dead on the shores of Indian Ocean in Nyali.

Timothy Mwirigi went missing from TUM on Saturday, January 18, in unclear circumstances.

“He left the university premises without disclosing where he was going,” said TUM students’ chairperson Denis Okanga.

After four days of searching for Mwirigi, he was found lying lifeless at Mkomani Beach in Nyali. He had his clothes on, with authorities saying it remains unknown whether Mwirigi committed suicide, or he was murdered.

TUM students’ leader, Denis Okanga, told K24 Digital that Mwirigi had a visible injury in the leg.

The First-Year engineering student’s body was taken to Coast Provincial General Hospital morgue.

Mwirigi’s father, Alex Mugendi, told K24 Digital that he has “lost a hard-working and diligent son”.

Erick Koome, another student leader at TUM, urged the institution to improve the students’ security, saying several learners have died in circumstances similar to Mwirigi’s in recent past.

Koome puts the number of students who recently went missing from the university in unexplained circumstances at ten.

A postmortem examination on Mwirigi’s body is scheduled for Friday, with police officers at Nyali post handling the investigations into the 20-year-old learner’s death.