• Businesswoman says three cops were trailing her car before they got out and one fired.
• Doctor says she will have to live with one kidney.
Elizabeth Ndunge is lucky to be alive after she was shot by a Mashuuru police officer on the leg and stomach on Sunday.
Doctors at Makindu in Makueni county removed a bullet that was lodged in the stomach.
“I am at least feeling better today and even took porridge this morning,” the 29-year-old told the Star on the phone on Tuesday.
She was rushed to Makindu Subcounty Hospital after the incident the same day and was operated on by Dr Joseph Gatura assisted by the hospital’s superintendent David Kasanga.
Kasanga said that Ndunge had sustained permanent damages and a shattered kidney.
“She is lucky she was brought in when our surgeon was on standby. By the time she was brought here her blood pressure was not readable,” Kasanga said.
Gatura explained that he established a bullet that went through the victim’s left hand, thigh to the stomach where burst the duodenum before shattering the left kidney.
“The operation took exactly three hours and although she will recover well. I am sorry she will have to contend with one kidney. We have passed the dangerous stage of dying,” Kasanga said.
Ndunge said she had left a watermelon farm near Mashuuru town on Sunday afternoon when she was stopped by three police officers manning a roadblock.
“One of the officers stopped the car we had loaded watermelons. The car’s brakes appeared weak and it took a while to stop. At the time, the officers were engaging another vehicle that was ahead of us,” she said.
After a while, she said, the driver of the vehicle she had hired ignored the officers arguing they were delaying him.
“After driving off towards the Mashuuru-Emali-Loitokitok road, we noticed a private vehicle following us and beckoning us to stop using flash lights. The driver in the car I was in ignored and sped off,” Ndunge said.
She said the private vehicle trailed them up to the junction when three police officers jumped out of the car that was following them.
“As we took the Emali turn-off, the policemen ran ahead of us with guns as they attempted to get ahead of us through a shortcut. On realising the driver taking off ahead of them, one officer fired his gun.”
Ndunge admitted that she did not know the police officer who shot at their car and added that he could have been attempting to shoot on the car’s front tyre to stop it.
“I started bleeding from the bullet wound that had hit my hand, leg and stomach. A few kilometres ahead, we reached a police roadblock and we were stopped,” she said.
At the roadblock, the three officers who were chasing them arrived.
An argument ensued between those who were pursuing them and those at the roadblock.
“They were asked why they shot at us for failing to stop. Meanwhile, another car that was also carrying watermelons arrived and took me to Makindu hospital,” she said.
Kajiado county commissioner Joshua Nkanatha told the Star on Tuesday afternoon that the DCI is following the matter “seriously”.
Edited by R.Wamochie