The police said I killed Chris Msando- teenage suspect reveals
The police told her mother that she was only going to the local police station to record a statement and come home but she ended up in Nairobi from Migori.
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A standard six pupil at Anindo Primary School in Awendo, Migori County, the girl whose name cannot be revealed for security reasons, said that she was taken by the police from her home, where she was found with her step mother. Little did she know that her first trip out of her home village would end her in a police cell answering for a high profile murder interrogation.
“I was shaken when they told me I am among those they are investigating over the murder yet I have never travelled out of Awendo. It was like a dream,” she told the Standard.
Her old inherited Motorola phone had linked her to the murder of IEBC ICT manager, Chris Msando.
Found
She was arrested on August 22.
“I was convinced they were going to kill me. I cried a lot and my mum also cried. I could not understand why I was being linked to a murder I had no clue of,” she said.
She narrated her story of that fateful August Monday when six police officers cladded in plain clothes came to their home, saying that that they had come from her. They had already spent a day in Awendo tracing her house at Jiw Dendi Estate.
Her 45-year-old stepmother, Miriam Onyango and she, were taken to Sub County Commissioners office where she was asked to surrender her phone while the police recorded their personal details.
The investigating police informed them that her old phone had been used to send threatening messages to Msando before he was killed.
In her mind, she couldn’t comprehend anything she was being told at that time, “I couldn’t believe it... That I killed Msando how? Who is Msando in the first place and where does he come from? ”
She declared her innocence but it fell on deaf ears.
“I told them firmly that I did not know such a person. But for some reason, they were not convinced,” she said.
They were asked to return back home. Only this was not the end of their nightmare.
The next morning, the police were back at their door.
Arrest
“On day two, they asked the girl to tell them where she got the phone and why she sent Msando a threatening message,’’ Mrs Onyango recalled.
The police claimed that someone had used the girl’s number to send life threatening messages to late Msando.
The teenage girl claimed that she had no clue about the phone traced to their house as the phone she was using belonged to her deceased grandmother. To that, the police showed her a piece of paper with a mobile number written on it.
“They asked me if I knew the number but I said no,” she said.
The police told her mother that they were taking her to record a statement at the police station. To Mrs Onyango’s horror, her daughter didn’t come back home that day.
“After that the officers announced they were taking away my daughter. They said she will be brought back after recording a statement at the local police station. She was taken to Nairobi,” the teen’s step mother recalls.
Taken to Nairobi
On August 22, Tuesday 7pm, the frightened girl and the six police officers arrived at the Muthiaga Police Station, Nairobi, where she was accused of killing Chris Msando.
“The officer we found at the detective’s office who appeared senior, asked me whether I knew why I was in Nairobi,” she said, revealing how she was questioned for hours but to no success.
She had no idea what the police were talking about. She stayed in the cell for seven days.
Freedom
A week later, she was released after the police found no evidence linking her to the chilling murder.
They determined that the girl may have come into contact with the suspect phone unknowingly. However, the police kept the phone. The SIM she had been using was registered under her step mother’s details.
Since her release, the teen girl has gone back to school and the head teacher says that she is traumatized from her experience.
“When she reported back to school, she looked traumatised but we are counselling her and she is getting better day by day,” said Mr Moses Odero.
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