Police in Kericho on Saturday gunned down three suspected robbers and arrested two others in a two-hour chase.
Kericho county police commander Silaus Gichure said the five suspected robbers’ were driving a Toyota salon car with fake registration number KBE 127 Y.
Gichure said the car whose registration number is KBT 127 Y had been stolen from Rongai subcounty in Nakuru county.
The five, the police boss said, have been on police radar after they were suspected to be behind a series of robberies in Kericho town and its environs in the last one month.
They were shot dead near Kapsuser market at around 1am after a chase along the Kericho sotik road.
Two of them who narrowly missed the police bullets were arrested and are being held at Kericho police station.
The county police boss said the suspects were armed with two toy pistols, machetes and pocket knives.
Before the shooting incident, a National Construction Authority officer Mils Sigei who was heading home to Kaitui in Kericho was flagged down by police mistaken for the criminals.
On spotting Sigei's car near Kericho-Kisumu highway junction, police flagged him down to surrender but upon discovering it was not the suspects' car they were pursuing, they let him go after roughing him up.
Sigei who was with his daughter, 3, a nephew and another relative in his car later went to Kericho police station to launch a complaint of police harassment.
The bodies of the three suspects were taken to Kericho Level 4 hospital mortuary.
The five had successfully robbed several homesteads of TV, electronic gadgets and money from villagers before the police were alerted.
Before the shooting incident, the suspects had waylaid Kericho branch Equity manager Richard Kipkemoi Koech and robbed him of his mobile phone and inflicted injuries on him.
The suspects later bundled the manager in their getaway Toyota salon car and abandoned him near Siloam hospital along the Kericho-Kisumu highway.
A good samaritan helped him to reach the hospital where he being attended.
-Edited by Skanyara
