Tough questions for top city lawyer in son’s fatal shooting

What you need to know:

  • Sources told the Nation last evening that Mr Nyakundi will be arraigned on Tuesday, but detectives will ask for more time to conclude their investigations.

  • Part of the investigation will focus on why the Toyota Axio Joseph is said to have died in had two bullet holes at the back seat.

Did prominent city lawyer Assa Nyakundi kill his son in cold blood, or was it a tragic accident? Those were the questions detectives were grappling with on Monday as it emerged that the gun fired at least two rounds from the lawyer’s white Toyota Axio.

His statement to the police indicated that he shot his son, Joseph, who was seated at the back seat of the car, accidentally as he holstered his revolver.

SON BLEEDING

The two, Mr Nyakundi said, were approaching home from church around 1pm on Sunday when the accident happened.

Police are also investigating how Mr Nyakundi drove all the way to a hospital in the Parklands neighbourhood with his son bleeding to death in the back seat, before driving back to Muthaiga Police Station to report the incident.

Neighbours and security guards at Parkside Estate on Monday said they did not hear gunshots within the vicinity of the otherwise quiet neighbourhood, off Kiambu Road.

Mr Nyakundi said the accident had happened near the Judiciary Training Institute. A Facebook believed to have been posted by his second-born son indicated that Joseph had been murdered in cold blood. The post has since been pulled down.

“Goodbye my one and only brother,” the post on Mr Onsomu Nyakundi’s Facebook page read, before an eerie summary: “Brutal, cold-blooded murder.”

Sources told the Nation last evening that Mr Nyakundi will be arraigned on Tuesday, but detectives will ask for more time to conclude their investigations.

Part of the investigation will focus on why the Toyota Axio Joseph is said to have died in had two bullet holes at the back seat.

LICENSED FIREARM

A ballistics expert at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) told the Nation that the holes were far apart, which raises questions regarding how the gun discharged.

Mr Nyakundi has been a licensed firearm holder for over two decades and his Glock pistol, according to the Austrian manufacturer, is equipped with three independent safety features to prevent accidental firing.

A worker at a homestead next to the Nyakundis said he saw Joseph on Saturday evening as he drove into their compound. He was in high spirits, as he always was, according to neighbours.

“There is no single day he would meet you on the street and not engage you in small talk,” a worker on the street, who identified himself as Samwir, said.

The Nyakundis have lived in the Nairobi suburb for more than a decade. Save for two daughters studying abroad, the rest of the family lives in Nairobi.

Four DCI officers spent more than two hours in the property yesterday, trying to piece together what could have happened. They interviewed Mr Nyakundi’s wife, his househelp and his other son in the presence of their lawyers.