GSU officer killed at Westgate was preparing to get married: Father

“I want to come back and stay a while with you and mum, but I need to go back to work and ask for more off days.”

Those were the last words Joshua Kithinji heard from his son Martin Munene Kithinji who was killed in the Westgate tragedy.

Munene, as Mr Kithinji calls him during the interview, was working with GSU Recce Company and was allegedly killed by friendly fire from Kenya Defence Forces.

Memories of his son are etched in Mr Kithinji’s mind.

A month before the Westgate tragedy, he had come home from the United States of America where he had gone for training.

Since joining the Recce squad, he had attended two other training programmes in the US.

The loss of his son, a highly trained and competent officer, heavily weighs down Mr Kithinji.

During the interview with the Sunday Nation, he often sighs and shakes his head still overcome by emotion one year later.

He sometimes stares into space as he recalls that fateful Saturday and the news of his son’s death.

“When Munene left Meru for Nairobi on Friday, I was hoping to see him sooner if he was granted the off days that he wanted, but that was not to be. On the fateful Saturday, I was watching TV around lunch hour and suddenly there were reports of shootings in a mall in Nairobi. I tried to call Munene to find out if he was alright but his phone went unanswered.”

Mr Kithinji narrates how a few hours later, when the Recce squad arrived to rescue people from the mall, he saw his son on television with his colleagues prepare to get inside.

“I saw him holding a gun, I tried to call him again, I was hoping he would pick up, he didn’t,” he says.

His son got in and his father continued to watch the unfolding events.

ENGULFED WITH SADNESS

Mr Kithinji describes how he saw a soldier on a stretcher being wheeled out of the mall.

“When I looked at the physic of the person on the stretcher, a sharp pain ran down my spine. I was engulfed with this sadness. I couldn’t see his face but something told me the person on the stretcher was all too familiar,” Mr Kithinji says.

“I later learnt it was my son, and that was the saddest moment in my life.

“He had hopes and dreams and aspirations, he had built a house and was soon going to bring home his fiancé. It has been very hard for us to live without him,” narrates Mr Kithinji.

He describes his son as a humble and very generous person. He says he was very likeable and had organised his friends to form investment groups. “He was a man of the people.”

Mr Kithinji is fighting with closure. He says he got a letter from the government telling him his son was killed by ‘bandits.’

“They should tell me the truth, my son was wearing a bullet proof vest, he was trained well, whatever happened inside that mall after KDf got in?”