Once through the mouth! How Chief Waruhiu was assassinated

Startled, the driver hooted and screeched to a halt. At the wheel of the black Hudson, Gichiri Mbatia barely had time to brake, stopping just short of driving into the car in front. The brown Ford Consul had appeared from nowhere, then reversed back into the narrow path.

From the front passenger side of the Consul, a tall skinny man in a brown jacket and a scarf got out. He walked straight to the rear left passenger window of the Hudson. Then he leaned slightly and asked the man seated there “Chief Waruhiu?” Before the older man could finish his answer, the questioner deftly pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket.

Then he shot the man in the back left seat. Once through the mouth. Thrice through the chest.

Then once, for good measure, into the front left tyre of his Hudson.

Without looking at the other three people in the car, he turned back and walked into his car. Whoever was driving it then hit the accelerator, turned sharply right towards Nairobi, and disappeared.

It was October 7th, 1952. At 12:48pm, the most senior Kenyan administrator in Kiambu District had just been shot. His body now lay with his head thrust back on his headrest and his right foot on the front seat. His eyes were closed and his mouth open, bleeding onto his dapper white shirt and pants. His beige hat was still intact.

Less than a minute before this daylight assassination, Waruhiu’s driver noticed another car closely following him. The other driver seemed impatient, hooting repeatedly and trying to force him to give way. But the dusty, potholed road was too narrow for two cars to fit. Then the road forked and Gichiri turned right. The other car turned left, the rougher patch, and sped away.

In the car, as he stared at the other car, the chief joked “this is why I don’t let you drive my car alone.”

Other than his chauffer, there were two other men in the car with the chief that afternoon. As the shots rang out, the one seated shotgun, Kiburi Thumbi, reached across and opened the driver’s door. He kicked the shell-shocked driver out. They both ran and hid in the bushes.

The man seated at the back with the chief, Kirichu, unsuccessfully tried to open his door. Then he resigned to his fate and fell to the floor. When the Consul sped away, Kirichu got out of the car and found himself alone. He walked all the way back home, to Githunguri, and only showed up at the police station the next day. At the crime scene, the two men hiding in the bushes walked back to find Chief Waruhiu dead.

The only three people who had just witnessed the murder that would change everything, had seen little of it.

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The murder of Waruhiu Kung’u made international news just hours after it happened. It was covered by numerous papers, and discussed at Westminster. Waruhiu, ‘a great citizen of Kenya’ was ‘a victim of his own people.’ It made the main topic in a flurry of secret telegrams between Nairobi and London, capturing a nation’s bubbling social mess.

Detective Gerald Heine, a young, capable but disquietingly ambitious cop, was tasked by with finding out who had done it. In a country that had witnessed a few assassinations and attempts in the previous four years, it was a difficult yet easy job. There was mostly just one suspect worth considering. The Mau Mau.

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