Student went missing only to be found dead

Until Wednesday, May, 9, Dennis Munene Gichangi was a promising student, studying law at the University of Nairobi.

The future lay ahead of him like a blank canvas on which the story of his life was to be painted. Yesterday, however, his family learnt with shock that Dennis, 25, was no more. Relatives found his body at the Coast Provincial General Hospital mortuary in Mombasa, where it had been labelled “unidentified person”.

His sister, Ms Mercy Gichangi, says she had been looking for Dennis on the evening of May 9, but his phone went unanswered. All his calls went to voicemail.

NEIGHBOURS

“On Saturday, May 12, I went to his house in Allsops, Kasarani, and he was not there. I asked from neighbours and they told me that they had seen him the previous week,” Ms Gichangi told the Saturday Nation yesterday after identifying his body.

After failing to trace the student, whose family hails from Kirinyaga County, she reported the matter to Ruaraka Police Station, which is nearest to where Dennis lived.

Police then started tracking Dennis’ number. The signal showed that he had last used his phone in Mtwapa but it had been switched off. All the while, Ms Gichangi and other relatives were searching in hospitals and mortuaries in Nairobi in the hope of finding him. There was no sign of him anywhere.

“We did not find him,” said Ms Gichangi.

MORTUARY

They also tried to establish whether Dennis’ phone had a new SIM card, but they reached a dead end. “The only option was to go to Mtwapa Police Station for assistance in order to search around the area, which we did on Tuesday this week,” she said.

Still, no information was forthcoming. Again, they embarked on a fresh round of hospital and mortuary visits around Mombasa.

“We searched all the wards at Coast General and we did not find him. Then we went into the Coast General mortuary, and the attendant informed us that he had seen the body of someone who fitted our description,” said Ms Gichangi. On viewing the body, they confirmed it was Dennis. The family’s worst fears had come to pass. Their son was no more.

FLOATING

Records at the mortuary indicated that the body had been taken there by the police on Saturday, May 12, after it was found at La Marina Beach, an entertainment spot in Mtwapa. A village elder at Marina had spotted the body floating on the water and informed the police. “The records indicate that his body could have stayed in the water for two to three days before it was found,” said Ms Gichangi. That means Dennis was probably dead by the time she was calling him on May 9.

The family is now questioning the circumstances under which he had died.

“He was fully clothed and even had his socks on, so, he could not have been swimming. It is hard to understand the circumstances under which he could have drowned. His body has no visible physical marks,” she said of her only brother who graduated with a diploma from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication.

The family is planning for a postmortem to determine what caused the death.

MYSTERIOUS

A friend said Dennis was a hardworking person with a promising future. “We were together in an acting crew known as Miale ya Njiwa production before he resumed studies mid last year. He was focused,” the friend said.

The body was collected at 3pm from the mortuary and was to be ferried to the family’s home in Kirinyaga.

Back in Nairobi, Starehe police boss Alice Kimeli said she could not comment on the case since the body was found in Mtwapa.

The question that is yet to be answered is: Was Dennis killed, and if so, why and by who?

His death, however, is a sad reminder of the growing number of university students who have died under mysterious circumstances in the recent past.

Additional reporting by Diana Mutheu