A 33-year-old police constable who committed suicide at Nyakianga police station in Murang’a had just returned from manning the ongoing KCSE exam.
Douglas Mbugua shot himself in the mouth in his house on Monday at 1pm in an incident that left officers attached to the station in utter shock.
According to Mathioya subcounty police commander Anthony Muriuki, the officer requested to talk to the officer who was at the report desk immediately he got back to the station.
The officer was, however, busy with another client and requested Mbugua to wait for him to finish.
Mbugua instead went to his house and a gunshot was heard just a few minutes later, prompting officers to rush to his abode.
“When they got to his house, they found that he had shot himself with a G3 rifle and was lying in a pool of blood,” the police boss said.
Muriuki added that the officer had an alcohol addiction, and that his family had taken him to a rehabilitation centre a while back.
The police constable, he said, would habitually miss work and lived alone, and did not leave a suicide note.
“It is our assumption that the officer was having domestic issues,” he said, underscoring the need for officers to seek professional help when they feel overwhelmed by challenges.
A postmortem will be done at Kiria-ini mission hospital, where his body is being preserved to ascertain the cause of death.
