Nairobi — A man who killed a seven-year-old girl after being denied sex by her mother has been sentenced to death.
John Irungu Macharia lost his last chance to save his life when three judges rejected his appeal and upheld the death sentence that had been imposed by Mr Justice Muga Apondi on January 22, 2008.
The jilted lover differed with Catherine Njeri’s mother, Ms Elizabeth Nyawira, a day before he picked up the girl from school, then killed her on March 11, 2005, in Nairobi. His sexual advances had been turned down.
“It is obvious he killed her to punish the mother,” ruled Mr Justice Erastus Githinji, Mr Justice Philip Waki, and Mr Justice Alnashir Visram. “A week later her body was found floating in sewage with broken legs and missing upper teeth. “She was still in her school uniform,” they noted.
Ms Nyawira and the convict had an affair which blossomed between August, 2003, and October 24, 2004, when he attempted to commit suicide. The judges said the appellant visited his former girlfriend on March 10, 2005, and insisted that he sleep in Ms Nyawira’s house.
She refused. When she rejected his advances, he assaulted her in the presence of her cousin, Ms Jane Wanjiku, and her daughter.
He only left after he was told that a security guard would be called to eject him. Ms Nyawira dropped her daughter at school and the convict later picked up the Standard One pupil. That was the last time she was seen alive.
Efforts by her mother, school authorities, and the police to trace her did not yield any results until a local TV station announced that the body of a school girl had been found in a sewer in Pangani.
Daily Nation
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