- Detectives have narrowed their probe to 13 teachers who were on duty on the fateful day to find out who is culpable.
- While announcing the closure of the school, education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha promised that a detailed briefing would be made public before reopening but nothing has come forth.
Parents of the 15 children who died at the Kakamega Primary School will wait longer to know the cause of the deadly stampede two weeks ago.
The 15 have since been buried. The school reopened on February 10 after a week's closure.
While announcing the closure of the school, Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha promised that a detailed briefing would be made public before reopening, but nothing has come forth.
Several theories have been advanced as to what could have triggered the commotion.
These theories include a prank gone sour, devil worship and a teacher with the cane.
Detectives specifically want former senator Boni Khalwale to shed more light on his claims regarding churches that worship in the school and devil worship. “We want to look at some patterns and see if they can help us,” Nyamboki said.
Addressing parents, teachers and pupils at the school on February 4, the former senator cast aspersions on the faith of churches that hold their Sunday services in the school.
"Once the investigation is complete, a file will be compiled and forwarded to the DPP for directions. The DPP could recommend prosecution if feels the evidence can sustain the case or an inquiry before a magistrate to establish what happened before charging those found culpable," Western regional DCI boss Shem Nyamboki told the Star on Friday.
He said detectives are also probing 13 teachers who were on duty on the fateful day to find out who might be culpable.
Three teachers were on duty that day, while eight others are class teachers for the eight streams of the class four and five. Others are the head teacher Dickson Wanyangu and his deputy.
"We have recorded statements from the teachers and we’ll also record accounts from students want to establish whether there was criminal negligence or not," Western regional DCI boss Shem Nyamboki told the Star on Friday.
"Some of the pupils we've interviewed gave an account that suggests that they may have been coached. They say they lessons ended and the class teachers prayed before dispersing. This, however, differs from the accounts they gave immediately after the tragedy that teachers were in a meeting when the incident occurred," he said.
"The account by teachers that pupils whose classes are housed on the two upper floors of the three storey building use the two stairways on the structure do not add up because a class five child died yet the class is next to the other staircase on far flank," Nyamboki added.
Nyamboki said detectives are also following the theory of a pupil who reportedly blocked others on the staircase forcing them to pile before him before overpowering him and falling on him.
This emerged as parents demanded for compensation for the loss of their children and accused the government of sidelining them in dealing with the tragedy.
The Kenya Parents Association, Kakamega branch organising secretary Dr Osborn Maballu, said the state must take responsibility and compensate lost lives since the children died in the hands of the school.
"The government has a responsibility to protect our children because they mean a lot to us and are our future. We could not be asking to be paid if these children died in our hands but they passed on in the hands of the school," he said in Kakamega on Friday.
Maballu said the government ignored parents in dealing with the calamity despite them being the key stakeholders in education.
During a joint requiem mass for the departed learners, Western leaders called for a commission of inquiry into the deaths saying police may not establish the real cause of the stampede.
A team of engineers led by the National Construct Authority (NCA) on February 6 inspected the building in which the deaths occurred and returned the verdict that it doesn't meet the minimum safety standards.
They recommended that the building be modification by building additional stairways to forestall future calamities.
Postmortem conducted on all of the 15 bodies revealed that they died due asphyxia, caused probably due to the pile up of the pupil's during the panic.
The building houses close to 900 pupils. It was put up by the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) at a cost of Sh56 million.
The school was started in 1943 and launched in 1947 as Indian School Kakamega. It changed to Kakamega Primary School late in 1963 after Independence. It had a population of 3,128 pupils at the time of the tragedy.