By Collins Wanzallah
The state has filed an application in court seeking to detain five police officers linked to the disappearance of 13 suspects from Gigiri police station. In an application filed at Milimani Law Courts, Nairobi, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) is seeking to detain the officers for 14 days to complete their investigations before officially charging the officers.
The officers who were on duty at the time when the incident happened are Corporal Ronald Babo (Duty NCO), Police Constables Evans Kipkurui (Cell Sentry), Gerald Mutuku, Mollent Achieng, and Zachary Nyabuto (Station Guards). In an affidavit filed in court, the DCI, through Inspector of Police Benedict Kaulu, requested the court to allow the five officers to be detained for two weeks to enable police to carry out investigations and establish the role they might have played in facilitating the escape of the suspects.
“The DCI seeks to have the five detained at Gigiri Police Station, Nairobi, to establish if they had a hand in the escape of the prisoners who were facing various offences,” the affidavit reads in part.
On Tuesday, the acting inspector general of police Gilbert Masengeli, in company of the deputy inspector general of police Eliud Lagat, CID boss Mohamed Amin, and the national police service spokesperson Resila Onyango, toured the station and announced that eight police officers, among them the local OCPD Jackson Sang, had been interdicted over the incident. Among the suspects who escaped from the cells was Kware murder suspect Collins Jumaisi and 12 Eritreans.
This is the second suspect linked to mass murder to escape from a police station in the recent past. In 2021, serial killer Masten Wanjala escaped from Makongeni police station, Nairobi. Three police officers were arrested and locked up in cells over the escape of suspected child serial killer Masten Wanjala. The officers included the Jogoo Road police station deputy officer commanding station and two others who were on duty. Wanjala was later killed by a mob in his Bungoma County home after he fled the police station. He had kidnapped and killed at least 12 children in four years in Nairobi, Machakos, and Bungoma counties. Five bodies linked to the killings were recovered.
Wanjala said he lured his victims and killed them before dumping the bodies at various places after posing as a football coach. He was arrested in July 2021 after he tried to obtain money from the parents of one of the children he had abducted and killed.
