A family’s decade-long search for IEBC clerk who vanished after polls
He was working as a polling clerk for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in Ndururumo during the 2013 General Election, and had graduated from university months before.
And when he received his salary on April 20, 2013, Kelvin Macharia went to a supermarket in Nyahururu town.
He was supposed to meet his college girlfriend in Nyahururu for a cup of coffee that same day. That was the last time Macharia was seen.
He travelled to Nyahururu and disappeared.
According to his father, John Mwangi Wachira, 72, his son told the family that he had gone to Nyahururu and would return that evening with household items.
“At the time my son went missing, he had gone to Nyahururu for shopping. But he did not return home. We have never heard from him again,” the elderly man told the Saturday Nation.
“He had just received his salary and told us he was going to meet a friend in town, buy some things and come back home. We later learnt that my son was to meet his girlfriend he studied with in college in Nakuru.”
Macharia’s family later learnt that he had met his girlfriend in Nyahururu, where the two spent the day.
So, what happened after the meeting? Was Macharia abducted?
These are questions the family of the then 25-year-old first-born son are still grappling with.
“Macharia was my first son and was the light of the family. His disappearance was heart-breaking,” the father of four told the Saturday Nation.
“We have been living in agony, spending sleepless nights wondering where my child could be.”
“Has my son been killed? I want to see him dead or alive. In my old age, I need him back home to help me take care of his siblings. I also appeal to security agencies to find my son.”
The family says Macharia’s phone went off the same day he vanished. Two days after he went missing, Mr Wachira and his family began to worry about the young man’s whereabouts.
He recalls calling Macharia, only to find that his phone was switched off. He was later informed that his son had been seen at Thomson Falls in Nyahururu in the company of a young woman.
It is not clear what happened after the two spent time at Thomson Falls.
The family’s efforts to trace Macharia with the help of police have proved futile. They can only pray for his safe return home.
The family filed a missing person’s report at Nyahururu police station, hoping investigators will solve the mystery.
The woman who was seen with Macharia was traced and questioned by police on his disappearance.
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She told detectives that she had planned to spend the night with Macharia but were attacked by a gang that made away with their mobile phones.
Wachira told the Saturday Nation that the woman added that after harassing her, the robbers abandoned her by the roadside and left with Macharia.
“We really don’t know where they took him, whether they killed him and dumped his body in the forest or in a river,” Mr Wachira said.
“I had never met the girl until the day Macharia vanished. My son had not told me if he had a girlfriend. It was the first time I saw her,” he recalled.
According to the family, the woman was detained and released after recording a statement with police.
Our efforts to establish the status of the investigations bore no fruit, as detectives at the Nyahururu Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) appear to have lost track of the matter.
When we reached out to Laikipia West DCI chief Benard Wamalwa, under whose jurisdiction the matter falls, he referred our reporter to Nyahururu DCI boss, Emily Kangangi.
“I am not familiar with the matter. The best person to give details of the case is the Nyahururu DCI boss,” Mr Wamalwa said.
Ms Kangangi on her part told the Saturday Nation that at the time Macharia’s disappearance was reported, Nyahururu was in Central Kenya.
She did not provide details when probed.
For the family, hours turned into days, then months, then years, but Macharia was never found.
Ten years on, the distraught father and his family are hoping against hope to reunite with Macharia.
Mr Wachira said his son completed his secondary education at Ndururumo High School in Laikipia County before joining a college in Nakuru where he took a two-year diploma course. BY DAILY NATION
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