Man kills brothers in bizarre sibling rivalry

• Sister cheats death as she was fast asleep when 26-year-old killer knocked at door

A man on Sunday stab-bed his two brothers to death in Kiambu.

His sister cheated death because she was fast asleep when he knocked on her door, asking her to open it.

The killer dropped the blood-stained kitchen knife at her doorstep, then walked three kilometres to the nearby Kikuyu Police Station and surrendered himself.

Before dawn, residents of Muthure village in Wangige were awoken by screams of the victims’ mother, Mrs Lucy Waruiru.

She had burst out yelling at around 3am, when she discovered that her eldest son, 46-year-old Evanson Kanja, had been killed on his bed.

The 26-year-old killer, Mr George Kimani, is the last born. Besides the dead brothers, he has five sisters. Mr Kanja had 15 stab wounds in the neck, chest and stomach.

He was helpless during the attack because he had been bedridden since 2008, having been paralysed from the waist downwards after suffering a stroke.

Before that, he was a lorry driver.

“Mum, kuja unisaidie (Mother, come and help me),” Mr Kanja had shouted before his mother rushed to his house, a few metres away from hers.

“I found the bedding drenched in blood. He told me his brother had attacked him,” the mother said.

When villagers rushed to the compound, they discovered that the killer had left.

At the time, he was knocking at the door of his sister Susan Wanja’s house, several kilometres away.

Unknown to the family and villagers, he had killed his other brother, 43-year-old Martin Karanja, moments earlier.

Police arrived with the bad news almost an hour later, after he had surrendered to them and confessed. Mr Karanja’s body had 15 stab wounds too, in the neck and chest.

It lay on the floor of an iron-sheet room at the nearby shopping centre, about 200 metres away from the home.