Eastleigh blast suspect could have been arrested, tenants
Fear and mistrust continued to cloud the flat where the Sunday blast occurred as residents said the suspect could have been arrested well in advance.
“There were a lot of people moving in and out of the flat. This raised eyebrows given the current security situation but no one took action,” said a business woman who runs a stall next to the flat.
She said tenants at the flat are very secretive and it would only take the landlord’s vetting or other tenants to weed out suspicious people.
Media reports
The woman we found at the gate refused to comment on media reports that her boss had suspicions about some of her tenants’ activities.
“I reported everything to the government and there is nothing else to be said,” said the woman.
However, those she was with claimed that she was indeed the owner of the flat.
A residential project’s details notice board at the gate showed the building’s owner as a Ms Esther Njoki.
Most of the residents said the suspect had not lived at the flat for long.
At the Al Bushra Islamic Centre, where a man who was assembling a bomb on Sunday was killed when it went off, everything on the ground floor was under lock and key, with only some hand carts ferrying furniture from the flat.
“I am not the owner of this furniture, I live in the next flat, I am just looking after them for a friend,” said a heavily veiled woman when asked if she was moving out because of Sunday’s attack.
But after persuading her, she admitted that her children attended the Islamic Centre and talked of a heavy police presence in the area.
She, however, said that she did not know the man who died in the blast. Two other suspects fled and are still at large.