Four Days After His Mother Died, Michael Kimani Called His Sister for KSh 200. By Morning, Police Were Searching for Him

The last phone call was small and ordinary. Around 9.30pm on Wednesday last week, 17-year-old Michael Kimani rang his sister, Mary Watiri, and asked for KSh 200. He wanted to visit a friend who had also lost his mother.

Kimani’s own mother had died only four days before him. Watiri says her brother was a peaceful boy who rarely left home and had sat his final examinations last year.

By Thursday morning, two of Kimani’s friends arrived at Watiri’s home looking for him. They told her officers from Mugutha Police Station had phoned them and asked whether they knew Kimani or his relatives. That was the first sign that something was wrong.

The family was later told a body had been picked up near a petrol station. They went there and identified Kimani inside a police Land Rover. Watiri said his face was swollen, and she fears he may have been beaten before he died. “His face was swollen like someone who had been beaten,” she said. That is her own observation, and no postmortem finding has been reported to support or rule it out.

According to the account, Kimani fell from the ninth floor of an Airbnb apartment in Gwakairu, where he was allegedly pushed. Police have not said how he fell, and they are still investigating the circumstances of his death. Two men who were reportedly in the apartment with him have been arrested, and a female suspect is still on the run. None of the suspects has been named, and no charges have been reported.

Large gaps remain. It is not yet clear how Kimani and the friend he planned to visit ended up in the apartment, or what happened there before the fall. The family, already grieving their mother, has appealed to detectives to speed up the investigation and establish exactly how the teenager died.