DP Ruto escort unit officer dies by suicide
A police officer attached to the elite presidential escort took his own life at his home in Juja, Kiambu County.
Constable Samuel Ngatia, a member of Deputy President William Ruto’s security squad, died on Monday morning after shooting himself in the head.
The motive behind the incident remains unknown.
A police report filed at Hays police post in Juja indicated the victim was alone in the house within the General Service Unit’s Recce squad camp on Kenyatta Road at the time of the incident.
“He used his pistol and shot himself in the head with preliminary findings showing that the bullet entered on the right side and exited on the left side,” the report said.
A Jericho pistol loaded with 13 bullets and a Trevor submachine gun with two magazines loaded with 30 bullets were found in the house.
Police also recovered two spent cartridges and one bullet head.
A team of detectives from Thika and Juja is investigating the incident.
Ngatia is the second officer attached to the DP office who has died in as many years.
In 2020, a police officer who was on duty when former Sports Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa and two foreigners are said to have visited the Deputy President’s office was found dead in his house in Imara Daima Estate, Nairobi.
Sergeant Kipyegon Kenei, of Administration Police’s Security of Government Buildings went missing since days before he was supposed to accompany his colleagues to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to record a statement in the Sh39.5 billion fake arms probe.
His body was found in his house in Villa Franca Estate, Imara Daima. Witnesses said he had a bullet wound in the head and his gun was found lying next to his body. The body was discovered at about 4pm by locals who called police.
Witnesses said there was a bullet hole in the roof of the house. Police who arrived at the scene at first described the incident as suicide and removed the body to the mortuary. They, however, returned it to the scene after learning that he was a person of interest in the fake arms probe.