Roaming the streets once more is a matatu driver accused of storming a hospital, slashing and shooting an injured man in a hospital ICU to death.
Mr Francis Mbuga Weru, a matatu driver was acquitted of the murder charge by Justice Jairus Ngaah for lack of enough evidence.
The police had charged Mr Weru alongside several other suspects with the killing a patient David Maina Wangeci on December 1, 2008.
Wangeci was in an ICU ward following an attack by gunmen at his home in Mweiga in Kieni Constituency. The assailants also slashed him with a machete.
He had been in the hospital ward for two days when on December 1, at about 8:00-8:30pm armed thugs stormed the ICU and shot and slashed him again.
After the attack he was transferred to Mt Kenya Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries about three days later.
Brazen attack
How the daring gunmen accessed the hospital’s ICU, which is under 24-hour surveillance, fired gunshots and left without being noticed, remains a puzzle to date.
Two nurses, Ms Virginia Wanjugu Thuita and Ms Judy Wanjiku Karori, were on duty in the ward which Wangechi had been admitted.
Threatened at gunpoint
Ms Thuita told the court she was in the resting room next to the ICU with her colleagues when a man, whom she described as “not tall”, stormed in and ordered her out.
She made as if to approach him but he whipped out a gun from his jacket and pointed it at the nurses, motioning them to keep quiet. They obliged.
Meanwhile, there was a commotion in the ICU ward. The nurses heard the patient scream but suddenly he went silent.
The gunman left and when the nurses went to the ICU ward, they found Wangechi bleeding. He was transferred to Mt Kenya Hospital where he died several days later.
The second nurse, Ms Karori, told the court the man who stormed their resting room left the ward after Wangechi went silent.
Suspects narrates his tale
Justice Ngaah acquitted Mr Weru, ruling that apart from police failing to get the real killer, the State also failed to table enough evidence to convict the matatu driver.
In his defence, Mr Weru testified on oath that he was a matatu driver plying Nyeri-Nyahururu Road.
On November 28, 2008, he said he went to work as usual and returned home at about 8p.m.
About half an hour later, some people knocked at his door.
Mr Weru told the court he was alone in the house as his wife had travelled to her parent’s home.
Peeped through window
He peeped through the window and recognised some of the people outside, whom he identified Gichuki, Elijah, Githiri and Mambo.
He started shouting and one of his brothers, Julius Waithaka, came out of his house.
The intruders fired in the air and Mr Weru escaped from his house but as he was running away he fell down. He said the assailants shot him on the left shoulder and at the back and was also cut on the head.