John Allan Namu recounts challenges of filming Lali and Tecra Muigai’s story
Award-winning investigative journalist John Allan Namu spoken about the difficulties he experiences while filming the story of Omar Lali and the late Tecra Muigai.
Namu, who released his latest investigative piece dubbed The Last Door, which shed more light into Tecra’s death, admitted that doing emotional interviews is always difficult.
“It really gets difficult when you have to pull those emotions out of people and try to get them back and calm,” he said.
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However, in a previous interview, Namu said that his passion for investigative pieces stems from his love for telling true stories.
“Giving a voice to the voiceless and telling stories that are not romanticized but rather those that show transparency of a matter,” he said.
Tecra died on May 2, 2020, at a Nairobi hospital while undergoing treatment. It is believed she died after she fell down the stairs at Jaha House, a hotel in Shela, Lamu.
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The circumstances surrounding her death are still of great interest to the Kenyan public.
In the documentary, Tecra’s sister Anerlisa said her sibling once showed her a large burn wound which she said was allegedly caused by Lali using a hot iron box.
On the other hand, Tecra’s mum, Mrs Karanja said that on multiple occasions she did not want to believe that her daughter was in love with Lali.
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“I kept praying about this, it troubled me a lot because I saw my child turn into someone I didn’t know. I talked to God because I feared losing my child,” she said.
However, in the documentary, Lali defended himself saying that he truly loved Tecra and her family and that her death was an accident that happened as he slept reiterating that he did not have a hand in it.
“As I was sleeping, I had a loud voice, followed by one shout and then silence took over. Waking up, I did not find Tecra in our room, only to find her lying unconscious downstairs,” he said.
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