Rally ace denies shooting claims

Rally driver Carl Tundo. PHOTO/ FILE

What you need to know:

  • Statements made in murder case have led him to be shunned by society, says Tundo

The man who was with Tom Cholmondeley the night Robert Njoya died in 2006 says that the jailed aristocrat had tried to pin what happened that day on him.

In an interview with the Times newspaper in the UK, Mr Carl Tundo, a rally driver, denied ever firing or owning a gun in his life.

Mr Tundo said that the case had led him to be shunned by large sections of the white community in Kenya although many friends supported him.

“I’ve never had someone try to pin a murder on me before,” Mr Tundo said.

“Tom tried to stitch me up. He never said it (that Tundo had fired the gun that killed Njoya) point blank, but that was what Tom tried to insinuate; that I was there, I was armed and that it could have been me.”

Speaking to the media about the death for the first time, Mr Tundo said he was some distance away when the first shots took place, believing that Mr Cholmondeley had encountered a wild animal.

But before he had gone too far, he said, he heard Mr Cholmondeley shout: “Bring the car — I’ve shot someone by mistake.”

When he arrived at the scene, “I found him (Cholmondeley) over Njoya. The guy was very much alive holding his backside where the bullet had hit him. Tom was tying a handkerchief around his leg”.

The case has aroused huge interest in the UK with opinion evenly split over whether or not the Old Etonian aristocrat and heir to Kenya’s most famous white settler family was guilty or not.

Mr Tundo himself has no doubts that his life will become more difficult in Kenya now.

“I’m sure for the rest of my life I’m going to get slated by some people,” he said.

“I’ve already been lambasted and attacked in bars and at weddings by mad drunk women who are on Tom’s side.”