By PETER OBUYA in Nairobi | Wednesday, October 9
2013 at
16:08
A 34-year-old Kenyan nurse is alleged to have stabbed her 21-year-old lover to death in what police claim is love turned sour.
The young man, a former student of Kenya's
prestigious Alliance High School, was waiting to join Kenyatta
University in Nairobi to study architecture.
He had scored straight As in his final secondary school examinations in 2011.
Ms Leah Muthoni — who is now in police custody
after being charged in court on Monday — is suspected to have stabbed
Adrian Ochingwa Kabala five times in the neck.
She is also said to have stabbed another woman she
found in Kabala’s company during the shocking incident that occurred
around 3am (+3GMT) on Sunday in Kinoo area near Nairobi.
The second woman, identified as Sara, was treated at the Kikuyu Hospital, in the outskirts of Nairobi, and discharged.
Kabala was living with Ms Muthoni, a nurse at the
Kikuyu Hospital, in an apartment only a stone’s throw away from his
parents’ house.
On the ill-fated night, Kabala was in Sara’s
company in another apartment, just two doors from Ms Muthoni’s. It is
there that police allege Muthoni found Kabala and stabbed him five
times.
Sara tried to flee but she, too, was stabbed in the right hand.
Witnesses said Kabala collapsed and died from the wounds he sustained.
Was asleep
A caretaker at the apartment, Mr Charles Kimani,
said he heard a loud wail coming from the house and shortly thereafter,
saw Muthoni running after Sara. She failed to catch up with her and gave
up the chase.
When Mr Kimani established that Kabala was dead, he decided to take Sara to hospital.
Meanwhile, Ms Muthoni called Kabala’s cousin, Leonne, to inform him about what had just happened.
“The call came at a strange time, just two minutes
after 3am,” Leonne said at Nairobi's City Mortuary where Kabala’s body
was awaiting a post-mortem examination Tuesday.
“Before I could say anything, she added: ‘It was either I die or he dies’”.
Kabala’s father, Mr Peter Kabala, received the news from his security man, who woke him up to tell him what had just happened.
Earlier, Muthoni had tried to reach him three
times — probably to tell him what had happened — but he never picked up
his phone because he was asleep.
“He was my first child,” a shocked Mr Kabala said at his home in Kinoo. “His future looked very bright”.
He described Kabala as a very social person, a fast learner and a man of many talents.
He also admitted that the younger Kabala was
seeing many women. He was also aware that the younger Kabala and his
lover had quarrelled over his promiscuity
The crime scene
“At his age, boys tend to have many women in their lives. The hormones are very active, but I had warned him,” he said.
Mr Kabala had tried to discourage his son from
entering into relationships with older women, but his advice had fallen
on deaf ears.
Ms Muthoni is 34 and Sara is said to be in her late 20s or early 30s, meaning, both were older than Kabala.
“I disapproved of their relationship (with
Muthoni) because I thought it wasn’t the right thing and even talked to
Leah to end it, but she was unwilling,” he said.
A third woman in Kabala’s love life is a Maritime
Engineering student at Jomo Kenyatta University. She claimed that Kabala
had been her boyfriend of four years
They had met as secondary school students during
the national drama festivals in Mombasa at the Kenya coast in 2009 and
the two have a one-year-old son.
She said she broke off the relationship only three
weeks after their child was born because she discovered that he was
also seeing Muthoni.
When police visited the crime scene on Sunday, they found Muthoni in her apartment and arrested her.
She was charged in court on Monday, but police
asked for more time to conclude investigations. “She is currently being
held at the Kabete Police Station,”
local police boss OCPD Mathews Gwiyo said.
SOURCE: AFRICA PREVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA PREVIEW
