Police in Kitui are investigating the murder of a Form Two student by unknown assailants, days after he won a Sh200,000 lottery from Betika. The 17-year-old boy was found murdered and his body dumped in a thicket a few kilometres from his home in Maliku area. He had been missing for several days.
Syengo Nyamai of Mavindini Day Mixed Secondary School is said to have won the money two weeks ago when he gambled in the 2023 Carabao Cup final match pitting Manchester United and Newcastle United. According to his elder brother, Mr Munyithya Nyamai, Syengo had used a neighbour’s national identity card to register a Safaricom SIM card that he used to enrol for the lottery, but he did not tell his family he had won the Sh200,000.
Earlier, Syengo had asked his mother to get him transferred to a boarding school, saying he would help to pay the higher school fees, without giving further details. Mr Nyamai said his brother told two of his close friends how he had won the lottery. He also told them he planned to travel the following week to see some friends who had invited him to Likoni in Mombasa County.
Syengo was last seen on the morning of Monday, February 27, when he left for school as usual, but he never arrived there. He had spent the previous evening with the two young friends who have now been detained by detectives investigating the case at the local shopping centre, where they watched the Carabao Cup Final, and stayed together late into the night.
The family got alarmed when Syengo failed to return home in the evening on the second day, and upon checking, they were told he had not been to school. The search for his whereabouts progressed, one of his two friends who is in police custody, came forward and told the family that Syengo had told them of plans to travel to Mombasa and he was to contact them upon reaching there to help in replacing his mobile line.
His body, with the eyes gouged out, was discovered in a thicket six days after he was last seen on Saturday, March 4. The scene where his body was found had motorcycle tire tracks, suggesting he might have been killed elsewhere and his body ferried to the place on the motorbike.
A post-mortem done at the Kitui County Referral Hospital revealed that his eyes were gouged out, his right hand was broken and there were injuries on the head. Katulani DCI boss Collins Karanja confirmed that police had obtained custodial orders from the court to detain for questioning the two suspects who were last seen with the student.
By, Maxmiller Kerubo
Comment here