They say that life is a mysterious journey but even at that we are the ones who have a great control of our final destinations. Salim Ali Gichunge was born an innocent child just like most of us. His parents, just like most parents only wanted the best for him and even enrolled him for school.
What then went wrong? How did a boy with a very promising future turn out to be a bloody killer?
Gichunge, known in Isiolo as Ali, schooled at Hekima Primary from nursery to Standard Six.
He then moved to Isiolo Barracks for the remainder of his primary school education.
He sat his Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination in 2007 and scored 335 marks out of a possible 500.
His sister, Ms Shariff, said Gichunge left their Isiolo home in 2015 after completing his secondary school education at Thuura Boys in Meru in 2011 after two short stints at Kibirichia Boys and Muthambi Boys. He attained a C+ grade.
He appears to have been a supple boy when growing up, as he left Kibirichia because he claimed he could not bear the cold, and Muthambi because he said he had been bullied by older boys.
“A minor accident in Form One put an end to his dream of becoming a rugby player, and so he shifted his dream to information technology,” Ms Shariff said.
After high school, Gichunge studied IT within the township, after which he was hired by a local hotel to run its cybercafé.
That exposed him to the endless possibilities of the Internet, and soon he told his sister that he wanted to enrol for an online course on religious studies.
“After a few months, he called me to say he was heading to Meru for a job interview,” Ms Shariff said.
A few hours after Gichunge left Isiolo, officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations raided the cybercafé on terror-related suspicions and carted away all the computers.
In early 2016, Gichunge told his family that he had moved to Mombasa to work at a construction site on the invitation of a friend.
But a month later, the friend informed the family that he had lost contact with their son.
Alarmed, the family reached out to Gichunge, who told his mother that he had landed a scholarship to study Islam in Uganda and Tanzania.
Gichunge was a son of a Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier.
He is believed to have died in the Tuesday attack after commandos stormed the 14 Riverside Drive complex in the afternoon to end an attack that claimed 21 lives.
His father, Mr Abdala Salim, a Sergeant with the KDF, was yesterday summoned by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, while his mother, Ms Sakina Mariam, was arrested in Isiolo and brought to Nairobi for interrogation.
Isiolo County criminal investigation boss Raphael Wawire confirmed the arrest and summons, but did not disclose the subject of questioning.
He said the matter was being handled from the DCI headquarters in Nairobi.