Constable with big dreams died hours after Facebook photo posts

Police Constable Dickens Wakhu, 28.

What you need to know:

  • In one of the photos, he was in full AP uniform. In other photos, he was in front of an Administration Police vehicle at the Daadab camp. He was stationed at Kulan AP post.
  • His plan was complete his degree programme in Disaster Management, a relatively new course, then join the police force. He hoped to do well as an AP officer and scale the ranks. He had seen several other people who had taken the course doing well.
  • A close friend, Abel Wekesa, who works in Kulan Secondary School in Daadab, and has been unable to return since last year due to insecurity, said he was still waiting for him to respond to a text he had sent him about the Yumbis attack after his phone went unanswered.

Family and friends have described him as charming, selfless and a team player, who above all else, loved football.

In what many have termed a premonition as they reacted to his death, Administration Police Constable Dickens Wakhu,28, one of the two officers who died during the attack in Yumbis, Garissa on Monday, posted several photos on the social site 24 hours to his death.

In the series of photos shot in Daadab refugee camp Wakhu, the 2011 graduate from Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, wanted showed the places where working in the police service had taken him.

“Hapa ndio Kikosi imenifikisha (these are the places the force has taken me to),” he said in reference to the photos taken at his Daadab work station.

In one of the photos, he was in full AP uniform. In other photos, he was in front of an Administration Police vehicle at the Daadab camp. He was stationed at Kulan AP post.

And yesterday, there was an outpouring of grief on his Facebook page following his death as family and friends mourned the fallen officer.
Some even questioned why Dickens joined the police and others were still in shock.

They said Dickens did not have to join the police to become part of the statistics of the many people who have died in the hands of the Al-Shaabab terror group .

He had only served in the AP for one year. Dickens who was a friend with this writer in college had always harboured dreams of joining the police from the time he joined college in 2006.

HIS PLAN

His plan was complete his degree programme in Disaster Management, a relatively new course, then join the police force. He hoped to do well as an AP officer and scale the ranks. He had seen several other people who had taken the course doing well.

The man his friends described as a statesman died fighting a terror group that has killed many Kenyans so far.

A close friend, Abel Wekesa, who works in Kulan Secondary School in Daadab, and has been unable to return since last year due to insecurity, said he was still waiting for him to respond to a text he had sent him about the Yumbis attack after his phone went unanswered.

“I had sent him a message enquiring about the attack. It was only after I went on his Facebook page that I was greeted with ‘Rest in Peace’ messages,” he said.

“I have been thinking about it ever since and I have been asking myself if Dickens a premonition about his own death. Whey did his take and post all the photos just as a day before his death?,” he said.

“Things had just began unfolding and we were doing well. We were looking into bright futures but now the cruel hand of death has taken him away. I wish this was a dream and that he is somewhere well and alive,” said Cornellius Ndisya, aformer classmate in campus.

“I saw the pictures and admired his looks. What I did not know is that it was the last time I was seeing him,” said Colleta Mwenje who had talked to him on phone the night before the attack.