Tall and ageing silos dominate the sprawling Moi’s Bridge town on the border of Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia counties, announcing the town’s main identity for any newcomer.
Beneath the towering structures, however, the town has recently been shaken to the core by a spate of heart-wrenching serial killings. At least four young girls have been brutally murdered and their bodies dismembered before being dumped in thickets within 500 metres of the area.
Mothers are now perennially living in fear, constantly watching over their young girls, who could easily become the next prey for the monster, who could be living among them.
The police said they were treating the cases separately, although the pattern of the killings could indicate the presence of a serial murderer. The victims are aged between 10 and 13.
The fact that all the girls targeted were under the care of struggling single mothers, in primary school and were snatched away while walking alone in the backstreets of the town before being killed have baffled the police.
Ms Sharon Sakwa, 27, was looking forward to a prosperous 2020. She has a struggling retail shop in Teldet estate in the town. On New Year’s Eve, her life was, however, forever turned upside down. Her daughter Stacy Nasibo Achieng, 10, disappeared on December 31, 2019 at around 6pm. She was a Class Four pupil at Children Are People Academy.
“I had just sent her to buy some tomatoes and dhania from a grocery stall near the highway (Eldoret-Kitale). I always sent her to buy the groceries when I was busy in the shop. She did not return when I expected her,” Ms Sakwa, a single mother of two, told the Nation on Thursday.
“By 7pm I got worried and stepped out to look for her. No one had seen her. I immediately embarked on a search with my neighbours until midnight, when we retired to our homes and resumed the following day,”
On January 1, as the country woke up to a New Year, a knock on her door confirmed her worst fears.
“I was told the body of my girl had been found beside the railway track. I rushed there and confirmed the body was hers. She had been raped and strangled,” she said.
“She was the sweetest girl I had. My life has never been the same again. I just want justice for her,” she said.
A month later on February 15, Ms Caroline Naliaka’s 13-year-old daughter was found murdered in the most gruesome manner. Ms Naliaka sells vegetables. On the fateful day she had just sent her only daughter, Lucy Wanjiru, to sell kale by the roadside. Her home is just 300 metres from Ms Sakwa’s.
“I was busy washing clothes as it was a Saturday. I told her to go sell the vegetables. She stepped out of our home at 9am and after an hour she came back, saying she had sold some of them worth Sh110. I told her it was too early to come back and told her to go back,” she told the Nation at her home.
That was the last time she saw her alive. At 1pm she went out to look for her as it was lunchtime.
“I did not find her and I came back to the house, but moments later a friend came rushing here and informed me that my daughter’s body had been found in a thicket at Karara, not far from here,” said.
The neighbours who found the body said she had been raped and the body dismembered and placed in a polythene bag. The vegetables she had been selling were then placed on top of the wrapped body.
“It was a painful death” said the 40-year-old mother of five.
Three months later, on May 21, Grace Njeri, 11, had just stepped out of the family’s home to play after dropping off milk for her mother Loice Muthoni when she suddenly disappeared.
After a month-long search, pieces of her body were found in a thicket near River Nzoia on June 18. She was buried last Monday. She was a Class Five pupil at Bridgeways Academy in the town.
“It was difficult to identify her, but the clothes she was wearing on the day she disappeared were still on. She was killed in a way no one would want to imagine,” said Ms Muthoni, 25, a barmaid.
The child’s head was found with the upper parts but without hands. Ms Muthoni, a mother of two, is now traumatised and too scared to even step out of her home. Her aunt keeps her company.
“She is scared and always worried that the people who killed her daughter might come for her and her son. I have decided to stay with her for now,” said Ms Grace Wangari, the aunt.
Other than the three, residents said they had also found another body of a young girl that was not identified and no one in the town claimed it.
Uasin Gishu County Commissioner Abdirisak Jaldesa said police were pursuing various leads and that Directorate of Criminal Investigations officers had been dispatched to the area.
“There could be the possibility of a serial killer, but investigations will help us get a trajectory of these killings. We will not stop until we arrest those behind these killings,” he told the Nation.
Soy sub-county divisional Commander Fanuel Nasio said police had arrested suspects, who had been questioned and released.
In Achieng’s case, two people have been arrested and charged. In Wanjiru’s killing, only one person has been charged and is in remand as the case progresses in court. In Njeri’s case, no one has been arrested.
“We are following crucial leads on the last case and soon we will make arrests. We are focused on these cases,” Mr Nasio told the Saturday Nation.
He said they had not ruled out anything, including the possibility of a serial killer on the loose or a cultic organisation kidnapping young girls for sacrifice.
“We are investigating each case on its own but we are not saying these are not related cases. Investigations will guide us.”
Uasin Gishu nominated MCA Belinda Tirop said it had been a stomach-turning period for Moi’s Bridge residents.
“This has never happened before. It has been a tough time for the affected families. We just want to get to the bottom of this. We want to know who is killing our girls,” said Ms Tirop, nominated by Jubilee to represent young people in the assembly.
Last year, Mr Mustafa Idd was arrested for the killings of two women in the town. The case is going on in the High Court in Eldoret and he has pleaded not guilty in the killings of Emma Wanyotta and Nancy Edome.