• Five suspects were said to have been ambushed in a house in Kayole, taken to an open space in estate and ordered to kneel down before being shot.
• Two escaped with gunshot wounds, three fell on their faces with hands above their heads indicating they had surrendered.
Image: COURTESY
After a two-month hiatus, the killer crime busters prowling the slums of Nairobi are back, this time taking down five lives within a span of two days.
Believed to be police officers, the busters are known for profiling their targets as crime suspects by uploading their images on social media, preferably Facebook, with death warnings.
It usually takes days before they make a follow-up post with gory images of the dead suspects lying in a pool of their blood.
The latest one is the early Tuesday morning shooting of five suspects in Matopeni, Kayole, fatally injuring three and leaving two with gunshot wounds.
Two had been reported shot on Sunday evening.
With blood stains still visible on the ground and the iron sheet walls, the Star learnt that the victims of harrowing brutality appear to have spent the night together in the house of one of them, explaining why the busters were able to find them together.
Witnesses avoid speaking, citing their fear of being identified by officers whom they claim prowl the area regularly and mete violence on those they suspect to be against their actions or sympathising with alleged criminals.
One of them who works with Kayole Social Justice Centre told the Star that the armed busters knocked the door of the house where the young men were, dragged them to an open space in the congested estate and ordered them to kneel.
"They then opened fire on them randomly. Two, however, managed to dash off, sustaining gunshot wounds," the source said.
The images splashed on Facebook show the three fell on their faces with their hands above their heads, suggesting that they had surrendered for arrest.
As is the norm in other reported cases, the source who claims to have witnessed the heartless slaughter said the busters then chased away the onlooking crowd that had gathered.
"I saw them place a black whip they came with beside the bodies before taking pictures of the corpses," the visibly shaken source added.
The pictures on social media show the bloody bodies lying alongside some banknotes, local and foreign, as well as mobile phones and a pistol which appeared homemade. It is not clear whether they recovered them from the deceased.
It continues to baffle observers why the busters continue to kill alleged suspects even after cornering them into surrender.
Area OCPD Wilson Korir confirmed the shootings but declined to give further details, insisting that he was in a meeting.
Independent Policing Oversight Authority spokesperson Dennis Oketch also confirmed that Ipoa was aware of three sets of killings in Kayole involving police officers.
He said the authority had dispatched a rapid response team to investigate the killings.
Activist Kennedy Chidi, known locally as JJ who documents such killings with Mathare Social Justice Centre, told the Star that since their Saba Saba rally at Kamukunji grounds on July 7, no such killings had been reported until this week.
The rally condemned extrajudicial police action, demanding that any suspect who has surrendered should be arrested and subjected to the force of law.
Edited by R.Wamochie