Kapsoya MCA aspirant James Ratemo has been barred from burying his three
children at his residential house in Eldoret town.
The Uasin Gishu County government has rejected the proposal
because Ratemo's home is in a small plot.
“We have written to the family responding to the request to bury the bodies at Kapsoya.
Usually, we do not allow such burials within the town
as per the law,” said the county executive for health Margaret Chepkwony.
The children, according to family lawyer Charles Nyamweya
will now be buried at Nyacheke village in Kisii on
June 9.
The county also talked of the texture of soil in the area where Ratemo’s house is located and the fact that concerns from residents had to be factored.
“Owing to what has happened, the family requires time to prepare for the burial in Kisii. That is why we have set a date that gives about two weeks to prepare”, said Nyamweya.
He, however, faulted
the
county saying several other people had been buried within Eldoret after being granted exemptions by the county.
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The county
had instead asked the family to bury the children,
Clifford Nyamweya (7), Dan Nyamweya (5) and Glen Ongaki (3)
at the Kiplombe Christian Cemetery with all costs waived.
But the lawyer said the family had decided to look for an alternative site in Kisii.
On Thursday, pathologists said the three murdered children were strangled to death before their bodies were thrown into River Nzoia.
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A postmortem on the bodies, led by Keittany Kibet, revealed the children lacked air in the lungs, an indication they had been strangled.
The children’s bodies were recovered from the river last Friday.
“Our finding is they had a lot of bleeding around the neck, pointing towards strangulation. The challenge we had is the bodies had decomposed having not been preserved for more than three days,” Kibet said.
He said it was not possible to indicate if the killing was done by one or more people or if the children may have been drugged first before being killed.
“These were young people and it’s possible that either one person or more may have been involved, although, from where I sit it’s not possible to tell,” Kibet said.
He teamed up with three other pathologists to carry out the exercise at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in the presence of relatives, family members and their lawyer Charles Nyamweya.
Enock Onsase, the children’s uncle who was suspected to have been the last person seen with the children, was not charged with murder after the prosecution asked for 10 days to complete investigations.