“I knew she would be back but now
she won’t return home”, a tearful
Trizza Kwamboka uttered amid sobs
as she recounted her last moments
with her daughter Sylvia Kemunto.
Sylvia went missing on Sunday,
March 30 before her body was found
in a hostel rooftop water tank at
Multimedia University on April 2.
“She was a very disciplined girl.
I have struggled raising her and her
twin siblings as a single mother,” her
mother said.
Kwamboka sells groceries in
Kawangware’s Amboseli area.
When
the Star visited her at the single-room
house on Monday, she was with her
two sisters and only brother and
neighbours.
“Grande (as they call Sylvia) left
here for campus on Friday. They were
sitting for some exam after which
she was to pack her belongings and
return home the following week,”
Kwamboka said.
For the last three weeks, Sylvia has
been commuting from Kawangware
to Multimedia University to attend
classes because she feared for her life.
Her mother said she had reported
threats from a fellow student who
had seduced her but whose advances
she had rejected.
On that fateful Sunday, Sylvia was
in her hostel room on the third floor
when the alleged suitor Eric Mutinda
crept in. Her roommate had left for
church and so only the two first-year
students were in the room.
Kwamboka said her daughter had
left home for college without pocket
money.
But when she went for their usual choir practices that Sunday at
the Lavington SDA, a church elder
agreed to send some cash to Sylvia.
“He sent Sh1,500 to her phone
and I immediately called to tell her
not to send back the cash. Sylvia was
so disciplined that if someone sent
her cash from a wrong number, she
would send it back,” her mother said.
That was around midday on Sunday and it was the last time the two
spoke on phone.
When she called again after 2 pm,
Sylvia’s phone went unanswered.
“I thought maybe she had put
the phone somewhere because she
had told me she wanted to wash her
clothes. So I said I would call again,”
Kwamboka said.
The next call was made at about
5 pm. Again, she did not pick the
call. Kwamboka felt something was
amiss.
Sylvia had never failed to pick
up her phone on two consecutive occasions.
She called again and again until
she decided to look for other contacts
at the university.
First, she called the
guard at the gate. He went to Sylvia’s
room but did not find her.
“Sylvia’s roommate told me that
she had left her in the room but did
not find her when she returned from
church,” Kwamboka said.
On Monday, Kwamboka went to
the university in search of her daughter. That search took her to Lang’ata
police station where she made a missing person’s report.
When she returned to her house in
Kawangware that Monday evening,
a disturbed Kwamboka could not
sleep. At about 1 am, she called Sylvia’s line but no one picked up.
“I called the police to alert them
that the number was on. But when
they called, it was switched off.”
On Tuesday, Kwamboka woke
up very early and left for Multimedia University hoping to get credible
information about her daughter’s
whereabouts.
She could not go on Monday because it was a public holiday and the
institution’s managers could not be
found.
“I also wanted to just sit by the
gate until they gave me my daughter,”
Kwamboka said, tears freely flowing
down her cheeks.
In the end, she received a call while
in her house that a body of a woman had been found in a water tank.
She was asked to go and see if it was
Sylvia.
“My world was shattered. I
couldn’t believe it. I had all along
been hoping that my daughter would
be found alive,” Kwamboka said as
her sisters comforted her.
Investigations by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions has so far established that Mutinda had tried to
touch Sylvia when they were in her
hostel room provoking a confrontation.
Sylvia hit her head on the wall
during that confrontation and collapsed.
Mutinda has since confessed
to police that he realised she had died
a few minutes later.
He then put Sylvia’s body in a
suitcase and took it to his room.
At
dawn the following day on Monday,
he left the room with the suitcase and
dumped the body in the rooftop water tank and vanished.
He would later surrender to police
in his home county of Makeuni on
Thursday April 4.
Mutinda was presented before
Kibera principal magistrate Zainab
Abdul on Monday, where the state
asked to detain him for 21 days pending completion of investigations.
