Court hands death sentence to ex-USIU-Africa student for 2012 murder of classmate

By Caroline Waforo

A former student of the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), Duncan Livingstone Kimathi, has been sentenced to death for the murder of fellow student Sarah Akello Aruwa. The killing followed her abduction and a Ksh. 100,000 ransom demand. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) announced the outcome today.

Justice Kanyi Kimondo handed down the sentence to Kimathi, 37, after finding him guilty of killing Akello between 30th June and 1st July 2012 in Kiamako, Githunguri, Kiambu County.

Led by prosecutor Millicent Kigira, the State presented 17 witnesses who gave evidence on the abduction, the ransom demands and the killing.

The court found that Kimathi and his accomplices lured Akello, abducted her and then demanded money from her family. It held that the manner of the abduction and killing showed malice aforethought.

Akello was a final-year International Relations student at USIU-Africa. On the day she vanished, she told a friend she was going to meet a man she had earlier met at the university library.

Her family was later contacted by her abductors, who demanded Ksh. 100,000 for her release. Her mother, Hellen Atieno Aruwa, told the court that a man called her from her daughter’s phone with the demand. She bargained the figure down to Ksh. 70,000 and then reported the matter at Kasarani Police Station.

Akello’s boyfriend also testified that when he tried calling her, a man picked up and told him to send Ksh. 100,000 to her mobile money account.

The court also heard that Akello had noted in her notebook that she planned to meet a “Daniel Muriithi”, whose phone number she had written down. However, the court established that Kimathi did not know any Muriithi, and concluded the name was part of a ploy to draw her out.

Investigators recovered Akello’s undergarments and a blood-stained top from a house in Savannah, where Kimathi’s girlfriend, Wairimu, lived. Wairimu, the second accused, later skipped bail, and the court ordered the trial to continue in her absence.

A postmortem found a laceration at the back of Akello’s head and bruises on her neck, with her tongue protruding. The cause of death was given as manual strangulation.

In his judgment, Justice Kimondo held that Kimathi acted with malice aforethought, noting that Akello was deliberately lured into a trap for abduction and ransom before being killed.

The court convicted Kimathi of murder under Section 203 as read with Section 204 of the Penal Code and sentenced him to death.