Alarm as suicide cases soar in Nyandarua county
Police in Nyandarua County have expressed concern over the high suicide incidents in the area.
According to Nyandarua North OCPD, Mr Timon Odingo, at least one suicide case is reported every week in the sub county.
A week ago, a 34-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself in Mahianyu village, Ndaragwa constituency.
Mr Odingo said Mr Joseph Maina’s death puts the figure of suicide victims in the sub-county to seven in the last three months and about 20 across the county. Most of the victims are young men, according to the police boss.
“We are alarmed by the high number of suicide cases in the area, particularly among young men,” Mr Odingo said.
GONE MISSING
In the latest incident, the body of the young man was discovered dangling inside his late grandmother’s unoccupied house after going missing for two days.
“The young man had woken up as usual, took breakfast and informed his mother that he was going to cultivate in their shamba but didn’t return home,” Mr Odingo said, adding that police were collecting far too many bodies of suicide victims.
Most of the suicide victims have been taking their lives by hanging themselves or taking poison.
The OCPD said police will engage stakeholders, including the church, in order to formulate ways of curbing the number of suicide incidents.
KILLED
He at the same time insisted that any person suspected to have committed suicide must go through postmortem examination to help establish the cause of death.
“This will help to eliminate instances of foul play where relatives resist postmortem on the body claiming they cannot afford the fee,” he said.
“A woman from Ol Joro Orok maintained that her four-year-old daughter had committed suicide by hanging herself in their house last week. But our investigations established that the woman actually killed the child and hanged the body in the house,” he said.
He added that the woman would also later admit to police to have killed her child.
“This is the reason we are stressing the importance of an autopsy to reveal the truth,” added Mr Odingo.
