Susan Wangui, the mother of a teenager lynched in Komarock on Tuesday, denounced the boy as a thief who specialised in snatching mobile phones.
Derrick Ndung’u, 19, was cornered by a mob soon after robbing a woman of her phone. His accomplices escaped on a motorbike.
“His work was stealing…he was a thief. I cannot defend him. He was snatching mobile phones…I once warned him he would die if he did not stop. I had tried my best to talk to him,” Wangui said.
She said Ndung'u's crime base was Maili Saba in neighbouring Kayole.
She recalled posting a Sh500,000 bond for him three months after he was arrested after committing a crime.
"His uncle, aunts and grandmother pleaded with me to intervene and have him released. I paid the half a million bond for his release,” Wangui said.
She thereafter got him job offers but he ignored her and resumed his life in crime.
Before he was killed, Ndung'u had told his mother that he was going to see a girlfriend who had just called him.
The mother pleaded with his friends to reform or else they are killed like him. “I’m telling his friends to change or suffer the same fate.”
Wangui was lauded on social media for her confession.
“This is the most sincere message I have heard all my life. Let them (criminals) say they didn't hear. It's so so clear. The grave awaits you if you don't want to work and sweat. Thanks to this brave woman. My condolences fellow mother,” Rose Juma posted on Facebook.
Barely a day after Ndung'u was lynched, human rights groups were up in arms, accusing the police of extrajudicial killings.
Police officers had on Wednesday gunned down four suspects along Kangundo Road after a botched robbery.
Two pistols and 14 bullets were recovered where the four - aged between 21 and 26 - were felled.
“Of late we have had a surge of cases involving young violent robbers, snatching items and vandalising vehicles in Umoja, Dandora, Kayole, Komarock and other areas…one of those killed had been on our radar,” Buruburu police commander Adamson Bungei said.
He said the gangsters escape on motorbikes after robbing pedestrians on their way home from the city centre and other places of work.
- mwaniki fm
