A family in Kiindio village in Meru County was held hostage for hours by intruders who assaulted and robbed them.
One victim told Baite Tv that four men stormed into the family’s house, assaulted her husband and daughter, took Sh9,550 and stole her daughter’s gas cylinder. The family, including a grandchild, was held hostage in their own home for hours, the woman said. She asked to be identified as Ciethangatha.
She fought back tears as she spoke about the ordeal.
According to the victim, she heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night, and a voice came from outside of unknown individuals identifying themselves as ‘Kibachia’ and ‘Gitonga‘. When she opened the door, four men stormed in and began assaulting her.
They told her not to mention God or anything else when she pleaded with them to stop assaulting her after requesting them to fear God and that she was like a mother to them.
They struck her once more, demanding that she hands over the money she had received from the women’s group. The victim reached under the mattress and grabbed Sh9000, which she handed over to them. They said it wasn’t enough and that she should give away all of the money she’d been given.
She gave them an extra Sh450, but they said it wasn’t enough. They reached for her purse and took Sh100 from it. Her grandchild pleaded with them to stop assaulting her grandmother, but her pleas were ignored. She was hit with a large stick and ordered to lie under the bed.
When Ciethangatha asked them to take her television set and sell it to raise the funds they required, they claimed they had orders to collect her head, but she pleaded with them not to. They undressed her, escorted her outside the house, and ordered her to lie on her stomach. One of the suspects inquired from another, whom he addressed as ‘soldier’ if he should murder her.
‘Soldier‘ said that because he had already assaulted her husband, there was no need to. As they were leaving, blood oozing from her head spilled on one of the suspect’s clothes and he hit her in the back of the head with a large stick.
According to Ciethangatha, they all live in separate rooms. She said that the suspects went to her daughter’s room and urinated on her food before leaving.
According to another victim, the Ciethengatha’s husband, no leader, police officer, chief, assistant chief, or Nyumba kumi elder paid them a visit after the attack. He said that they strangled his neck before fleeing with two phones and Sh300,470, which he planned to use to build a perimeter wall and a gate after returning from Nairobi.
He said that after they were attacked, the only person who came to their aid was her daughter from Muriri, who drove them to the hospital
Another victim, Nkanja, Ciethangatha’s daughter, claims that when she heard a commotion in her mother’s room and attempted to leave her room, she was ordered to stay put by one of the suspects manning her door.
She was told that her turn had not yet arrived. When she attempted to open the door, she was hit with a large stick and ordered to stop yelling. They later opened her door and led her to her mother’s room, she claimed.
She said that the suspects demanded that she turn over the money she had given to her mother during the women’s group meeting. They smacked her with a large stick when she told them she didn’t have any and that her mother had also been barred from attending the women’s group meetings due to unpaid loans.
Her daughter pleaded with them to stop attacking her, but her pleas were ignored.
“They ordered me to undress, and when I refused, they said that I was stubborn. They threatened to cut off one of my breasts when I undressed because I was not cooperating with them. I asked them to cut it off if it would stop them from assaulting my mother. They shook every cloth to see if there was money,” she said.
She claimed that the attackers were receiving orders from their coworkers outside the house. She claimed that the men, accompanied by one woman, smashed all the windows before fleeing.
“We followed them from a safe distance after they left the house to see where they were going. A neighbor who heard our screams pursued them and was stabbed when the suspects made him,” she said.
According to Nkanja, the police made no attempt to investigate when they discovered items stolen from her house. She said that the items included a gas cylinder, motorcycle wheels and a machete and had been abandoned in a house.
