Police questioned over bodies found in car at their station

A post-mortem examination of the bodies of two children discovered in a wrecked car parked at the Athi River Police station on Wednesday evening is set to be done on Monday at the Chiromo Funeral Home.

The examination is part of efforts by detectives to piece together the last moments of best friends Alvina Mutheu and Henry Jacktone, whose murders have shocked the country.

Alvina, 3, and Jacktone, 4, went missing on June 11, and in a bizarre twist of events their bodies were discovered at the very place their parents reported their disappearance, raising questions on who could have snuck their bodies into a police station, and why.

Some of the answers the post-mortem exam could provide include Alvina and Jacktone’s cause and date of death, and whether there was any form of struggle.

DECOMPOSE FASTER

Their bodies were decomposed by the time they were discovered on the floor of a car parked at a yard inside Athi River Police Station. The speed of decomposition, however, varies depending on the environment, and the heat inside a parked car can make a body decompose faster.

“We only found skeletons and it was not easy to tell them apart,” Clifton Odhiambo, who is Jacktone’s father, told the Sunday Nation.

Preliminary investigations show that the Toyota Belta, registration number KCT 510X, in which the two bodies were found was not broken into. Keys belonging to impounded cars are usually kept inside a safe under the responsibility of officers on duty.

The keys can only be released if the impounded car has been officially released and a note issued to whoever has come to claim the vehicle. It is puzzling how someone accessed a car parked inside a police station, which is a security installation, put the bodies of two children inside a car, and left without anyone noticing.

Detectives have already questioned a number of officers from the station.

It is said that a man claiming to be the owner of the car discovered the bodies when he went to collect it on Wednesday. The car, which is now a scene of crime, has been parked at the station since March 5, when it was involved in a road accident.

FRESH STATEMENTS

Athi River police boss Catherine Ringera on Thursday said the car had nothing inside when it was brought to the station.

“We inspected it and other than the spare wheel and a wheel jack, there was nothing else in it,” she said.

Detectives have now summoned the owner of the car plus the man who is said to have come to the station wanting to have it released to him. A search on the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) system shows that the car is registered to a Ms Peris Ngugi.

Parents of the two children are also set to record fresh statements with the police. They claim they had received a number of calls from unknown people after their children disappeared, asking them for ransom.

None of these claims were reported at the Athi River Police Station, apart from the fact that Alvina and Jacktone had disappeared.