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Woman killed in mistaken identity case


A house help was brutally killed in Kayole after being mistaken for a second wife.

But the killers’ plan to kill a two-year-old child by setting the house on fire backfired after neighbours rescued her from the burning house.

Witnesses said the suspected killers, who included the first wife to Mr Samuel Mukumi stormed the house at around 3pm on Saturday and tied Ms Elizabeth Atieno, 18, with ropes before smashing her head with a hammer, killing her on the spot.

They are then said to have turned to the child, doused her with petrol and set the house on fire before fleeing on a motorcycle.

The second wife was not in the house at the time.

Running away

Amos Etole a Mandazi trader a few meters from the house said he alerted Ms Atieno that he had seen three visitors; two women and a man enter the house.

“She had come to buy mandazi when I noticed three people enter the house and alerted her. She then left to go and attend to them,” he said.

“Later, we saw smoke coming from the roof and shortly afterwards the two women and a man running away from the compound. They fled in a bodaboda,” he added.

Neighbours were forced to break the main door to rescue the child and pull out the body of the house help. They found it slumped on a chair.

“Her hands and legs had been tied. She had a nasty wound on the face and there was blood everywhere,” said Mr Etole.

Another witness said they were alerted to the child’s presence in the house by her screams. They found her in a bedroom.

Kayole police said Ms Atieno had suffered trauma inflicted by a blunt object suspected to have been a hammer. 

Initial investigations suggested that she could also have been strangled using a rope.

“They set the house on fire and placed a gas cylinder in a position that could have led to an explosion,” added the officer.

The area County Rep Paul Kados, among the first people to arrive at the scene said he called Mr Mukumi and broke the sad news.

“I gave him the descriptions of the two female suspects and he straight away said one of them fitted that of his first wife,” he said.

The police, Mr Mukumi and Kados went to Saika where the first wife lived and arrested her.

But the accused claimed she had been at work all morning and knew nothing about the attack.