A 23-year-old mother of one was on Wednesday murdered by an unidentified man who had dug a hole to access her house at Gatumbiro in Ol Joro Oro, Nyandarua.
Alice Wanjiru was hit on the head with a blunt object, which her uncle Joseph Muthii suspected was a crowbar.
She and her Form Two sister, brother and three-year-old daughter were asleep at the time of the attack.
Muthii suspected the killer might have sprayed drugs into the room to put everyone to sleep as he dug the metre-long hole at the base of the wooden house to access the bedroom.
The killer smashed Wanjiru's head, causing blood and brain matter to splatter on the floor.
“The criminal(s) attempted to escape with her, but dropped body at the gate when the sister started screaming, Muthii said.
“The killer must be someone from within, well known to her. He know where she slept.”
The uncle, however, did not speculate on the identity of the suspect. “I cannot talk about that given that the police have taken up the matter. We don’t want to jeopardise the investigations.”
Wanjiku’s sister was not sure whether the attacker was alone. All she noticed was that when she woke up, there was a man in the room whom she did not identify.
“He shone a torch on my eyes before placing my sister on his shoulders and running out with her. We ran after him screaming and he dropped her and escaped," she said.
Their mother, Naomi Wairimu, told the Star she did not know how the criminals accessed the room.
She was sleeping in a separate bedroom and was woken up by her younger daughter’s screaming around 3am.
“The criminal had by then run out through the main door with Wanjiku on his shoulders. He dropped her at the gate and ran away,” she said.
Nyandarua West sub-county police commander Isaac Ruto on Thursday told the Star that Wanjiru bled profusely as she had been cut several times in the head. She was rushed to Nyahururu Referral Hospital from where she was referred to Provincial General Hospital in Nakuru where she died.
Wanjiru will be buried on Friday (today), pursuant to the current government regulations.
“After this we shall dig in for all possible clues. It is ridiculous for someone to dig a tunnel to access a house. The scene of crime has been processed and we shall interrogate the children and other relatives,” Ruto said.
