• Gangsters wielding pistols rob Musyoka of Sh185,000.
• They shot at him three times but missed
Thirty-year-old Kitui trader, Charles Kyalo Musyoka, is a lucky man.
On Wednesday night, a gang of gun-toting robbers shot at him three times but missed.
The gangsters raided his wholesale and retail shop at the Kitui bus terminus at 9.30pm, armed with two pistols.
They robbed him of Sh185,000 in cash and Safaricom credit cards worth Sh8,000.
“These people appeared to be on a mission to eliminate me. Those three gunshots were obviously meant to finish me,” Musyoka said.
However, a taxi driver who witnessed the robbery and attempted to pursue the fleeing thugs while raising alarm was not as lucky.
He was shot and killed. The bullet went through his right eye and remained lodged in his head.
When reporters arrived at the hospital where he had been rushed to after the shooting, medics said he had been pronounced dead on arrival.
Confirming the incident, Kitui county police commander Lydia Ligami said investigations were underway but no arrests had been made.
She said spent cartridges had been collected from the scene and taken to Nairobi for ballistic analysis.
Narrating the ordeal at a Kitui hotel on Thursday morning, Musyoka said the thugs struck as he was about to close his shop.
“I had gone out of the shop to close my refrigerator when the gunmen struck,” he said.
He said as he reached for the door to hide inside the shop, one of the three gang members fired at him three times.
“I was lucky I wore a baggy jacket last night as all the three bullets grazed the jacket as I ducked,” he said.
He added that as he was being shot at, another armed member of the gang who was keeping watch outside shot in the air three times.
Another went into the shop, ransacked it, and made away with the money and the Safaricom credit cards.
“It was an operation that took a short time. By the time people arrived, the gangsters had fled,” he said.
(Edited by O. Owino)