Court remands suspect in Kilimani murder case

A suspect arrested in connection with the killing of a woman in Kilimani, Nairobi last week will spend ten more days in remand, a Kiambu court ordered on Wednesday.

Mr Joseph Kuria Irungu alias Joe Jowi, who is accused of killing 28-year-old Monica Nyawira Kimani, will be held at Muthaiga Police Station to allow detectives complete investigations.

Kiambu Senior Principal Stella Atambo also ordered that the suspect be taken to a hospital. He has a gunshot wound.

Mr Irungu was arrested on Tuesday morning in his house. He told police officers he was attacked by gunmen on Friday morning as he dropped his fiancée, TV anchor Jacque Maribe, at her house in Royal Park Estate, in Lang'ata.

A police officer familiar with the investigations said the suspect had reported at Lang'ata Police Station that he had been shot, but said that he would seek treatment.

The suspect, he said, went ahead to take selfies of the ‘gunshot wound’ on his left chest below the shoulders, and shared them on WhatsApp, a situation he said was strange.

He said a multilateration of his phone’s radio signals had been traced to Luciane Apartments on Kitale Lane off Denis Pritt Road, where Ms Kimani lived, and police believe that he may provide a crucial lead to what happened the day the woman was killed.

Ms Kimani, who had just arrived from South Sudan where she runs a family business, was on Thursday morning found dead in the bathtub of her apartment. Her throat had been slit.

COMMUNICATED

Investigations show that the suspect and the deceased had communicated for long, and that they even planned to meet at the airport on her arrival.

Neighbours had reported to the police that on the day of the killing, two men, one dressed in a kanzu, had visited Ms Kimani at her apartment.

The neighbours alleged that the deceased and her visitors interacted in a manner suggesting that they knew one another, because she picked them from outside the apartment and even introduced them to her neighbours. It is not clear what time the two men left the apartment.

Ms Kimani's brother George Thiru said he discovered the body on Thursday after he failed to reach her on phone for days.

“When I went to her apartment, I knocked at the door but there was no response, so I decided to break the door. I found her in the bathtub, dead,” Mr Thiru told the Nation.