• North Ugenya Location Chief Joseph Ooko confirmed his death, attributing it to stress over a court case that he is said to have lost abroad.
• “His father was the first to find him. The father then called us and indeed we visited the scene and found that it was true that he killed himself,” Ooko told the Star.
Image: THE STAR
Brian Aris Obiero, 32, a teacher from Siaya who has been claiming that he is a widower of an Ethiopian Airlines crash victim, died by suicide on Thursday.
The lifeless body of Brian Aris K’Obiero was on Thursday morning retrieved from a tree in the backyard of his parent's homestead in Sega, Ugenya Sub County.
North Ugenya Location Chief Joseph Ooko confirmed his death, attributing it to stress over a court case that he is said to have lost abroad.
“His father was the first to find him. The father then called us and indeed we visited the scene and found that it was true that he killed himself,” Ooko told the Star.
Ooko noted that K’Obiero had not left any note behind but preliminary investigations pointed to a depressed youth, a few days ago.
The chief reported that K’Obiero was taken ill to a hospital in Eldoret by his mother but all medical tests returned negative and he was brought back home three days ago.
“The mother picked him from school to Eldoret for treatment but no disease was found. The doctors however noted that he was depressed and ought to have been counselled instead,” explained the local administrator.
Until the time of his death, K’Obiero was a teacher at Nyangoma Boys Secondary School in Bondo.
The deceased sprung to the limelight in 2022 after he claimed that he was the widower of a Canadian woman, Drawn Christine Tanner who perished in the ill-famed plane crash in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019.
On March 25 2022, K’Obiero, through advocate Doreen Musebe, filed a case at the Siaya Law Courts wanting to be confirmed as the husband of the deceased.
In the court case which has Tanner’s son, Hunter Tanner French, as the respondent, K’Obiero swore in an affidavit that he met the woman on LinkedIn in 2016 and was in an active marriage relationship with her.
In an affidavit, K’Obiero noted that Tanner was the head of the Department of Special Education in Hargersville Secondary School in Canada and that he approached her on LinkedIn to guide him on his Master’s thesis on Special Education.
“We met on LinkedIn and became friends because of our common interest in education,” K’Obiero said.
K’Obiero said that Tanner later came to Kenya where they lived in a rented house in Narok town, somewhere between 2016 and 2019.
He also said that Tanner visited his home in Alego where she was warmly welcomed and got married in a Luo traditional ceremony.
The deceased said in court documents that, he even buried a sausage tree, according to Luo traditions, when Tanner perished in the crash.
“I have not entered any relationship or involved myself in an intimate affair with any woman ever since I lost my wife,” K’Obiero said.
Following the unfortunate death of Tanner, K’Obiero hoped to be enjoined in the proceedings for compensation of Tanner by Ethiopian Airlines, a case that has been active in the United States of America.
But Tanner’s son, Hunter Tanner French, denied K’Obiero, asserting that his mother was not married to the plaintiff.
“I, Hunter, was entrusted as the trustee of my mother’s estate. We were so close and at no point did she mention that she was engaged or married to the applicant,” Hunter said in a counter affidavit.
Hunter also stressed that no remains of his mother were buried anywhere, not even in Kenya.
As the case was simmering, Hunter did turn to Anthropologist and human rights scholar Dr Steve Ouma Akoth to consult on Luo customs.
K’Obiero on the other hand had paraded some members of the Luo Council of Elders to help him ease the burden of proof.
The case is before Justice Roseline Aburili in Siaya Law Courts and was coming up on July 19 2022.