The owner of the short-stay rental apartment along TRM Drive in Kasarani, Nairobi, where a 20–year–old Rita Waeni was brutally murdered will remain in custody for 10 days.
Priscila Maina will be held at the Kasarani police station together with three men arrested at the Green House Apartments next to the house where the woman is said to have been brutally killed.
Maina is in custody for failure to register her tenant’s crucial details as required by the law, which would have helped the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers to trace the murderer.
The deceased’s body parts were found stashed in two trash bags at the garbage collection point and others wrapped in a white bedsheet bag on the ground floor of the house and her head is still missing.
Maina is held together with Kelvin Mutiso, Eugene Omondi and Brian Kinoti who were arrested near the house and the DCI has obtained orders to detain them pending investigations.
Maina’s lawyer Eunice Katila had opposed the application for her detention stating that it was her client who reported the incident to the police, which shows she had nothing to hide and her only mistake was failure to register personal details of the client who booked the house.
“The scene has also been secured and she cannot in any manner interfere with the investigations,” the lawyer argued.
The deceased woman was killed and her body dismembered by an unidentified man who had rented AirBnB – house number B1 located on the first floor of the Green House Apartments which had been rented by a middle-aged man who did not give his particulars at the time of renting the house.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations says Mutiso was found in house number B2 next to the one where Waeni was killed and told the police that he had visited the house and spent the night there.
According to the DCI, upon searching him, he was found with a blood-like substance on and underneath his nails.
The other two men told the police that they were with Mutiso watching an Africa Continental tournament match and had dinner together before parting ways.
Omondi who is a student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology said he had visited his uncle who lives in the same house, before returning to school.
He claimed his uncle lived next to the house where the deceased was killed.
Senior Principal Magistrate Justus Kituku of the Makadara Law Courts granted an okay to Corporal Winnie Mworia of Kasarani DCI offices who sought to detain the suspects to aid in investigations.
Magistrate Kituku said there is public interest in the case and a thorough investigation is needed for all those culpable to face the law.
“There is no doubt that the nation’s psyche has been gripped by the increased murder cases in (short-stay rentals) where victims have been lured and killed, raising public outrage and concerns about the safety of those in the se rentals. The most recent unfortunate incident is now what is before the court,” the magistrate stated.
“It is in the best interest of the respondents (Ms Maina, Mutiso, Omondi and Kinoti) that they be thoroughly investigated and exonerated if they are innocent rather than hurried investigations where they charge only to be acquitted after a long trial.”
Mr Kituku added that it is also important to note that there is a victim and her family who are looking forward to justice noting that they are equally protected by article 50 (9) of the constitution.
