NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 6 – A 27-year-old man allegedly killed his wife in Kakamega on Friday and turned up at a local police station claiming she had committed suicide.
According to police, the man identified as Edwin Okoth Owino, turned up at the Musanda Police Station at 6am and told officers that had woken up to find his wife’s lifeless body at the living room where he had left her the previous night.
But the officers found the story suspicious and accompanied him to his house where they found the body of the 24-year-old woman on the couch with visible signs of having been assaulted.
On questioning him further, officers said he insisted he was not responsible for the death but he was sold out by a girl who had managed to escape during the beating.
“Shockingly, a thoroughly beaten-up body of his wife laid lifeless at the sitting room, where the suspect had stage-managed a suicide, suggesting she had taken poison. As police probed further into the suspect’s inconsistencies, a 16-year-old girl who survived the man’s brutality by a whisker last night emerged from the crowd that had since formed up, shedding light on the ordeal,” the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said.
The girl narrated to the police how the man beat up his wife after discovering a romantic message on her phone from a man.
“Sadly, a text message that popped up from a strange number, which Okoth interpreted to be from a secret lover had cost the dear life of the victim,” the DCI added.
The suspect is also said to have attacked his neighbour, believed to be the wife’s friend, who shed more light on the events that culminated to her death which led to his arrest.
The DCI stated that when the suspect saw the message on his wife’s phone at around 10.30pm, he went proceeded to call the girl (a neighbor) whom he believed was his wife’s best friend, before attacking both of them with a piece of wood.
It is not yet clear how the neighbor was related to the alleged cheating by the suspect’s wife.
The man is in custody and is set to be arraigned in court on Monday.
Cases of homicide have been on the increase in various parts of the country partly blamed on mental health issues others blamed on COVID-19 economic effects.
