The body of a man accused of killing his two sons and setting the house ablaze was on Wednesday found in a building under construction in Taveta.
Jason Chacha, 55, is suspected to have hanged himself two days after allegedly killing his two sons, aged four and eight, in Bombolulu Workshop, Mombasa county.
Police officers in Taveta, Taita Taveta county, said they received a report on Wednesday at 7am that an unknown person had hanged himself in a building under construction.
Police said they used his identification details to call Ntimaru police station in Migori, the home county of the deceased.
“We found the body of a man hanging in a house which was under construction and used his ID number and other details to locate his rural home. We later received a call from a person who identified himself as his brother and lives in Mombasa, saying he knows the deceased,” the police said.
Police have asked the family to go and identify the body which is lying in Taveta mortuary.
Chacha's brother James Ikwabe said he received a call from his rural area chief in Ntiramu village, Migori, on Wednesday at 2pm informing him that his brother had been found dead in Taveta.
“When the police officers from Taveta called my rural home police station, they reached out to our area chief who called me to inform me about my brother’s death,” he said.
Ikwabe said a motorcyclist who claimed to have carried Chacha the night the children died said he left him in Sabasaba, Mombasa county.
Chacha, a father of three, was suspected of having killed his two children on Monday at 2am in his bedroom before setting the house on fire with the bodies inside. The bedroom was locked using a padlock.
His first born daughter said she was rescued by neighbours after shouting for help. She said she was sleeping in the living room and when she woke up, the house was on fire.
“There is a boy who was sent by my father on Sunday to go and buy paraffin worth Sh200. When I woke up that night, I started calling the names of my brothers but no one was answering,” the girl said.
“My father took them and locked them in his bedroom. I tried to access the room but the door was locked with a padlock so I started shouting for help and was rescued by neighbours.”
Chacha's wife was not home during the incident. She said her husband had told her to leave the house on Sunday night or else he would kill her.
She said that on Friday, she was beaten up by her husband and on Sunday at 8pm, the same night her children died, she left the house to go and seek refuge at her friends place after her husband threatened to kill her.
“When he told me to leave the house, I did not know his intentions. I went to sleep at my friend’s house only to receive a call at 7am informing me that my children had died and they are in the mortuary,” she said.
Boke claimed her husband called her and told her that he did not burn the children, instead he strangled them and burnt their bodies in the house using paraffin.
A postmortem done on Wednesday morning on the two bodies at the Coast General Teaching and Referral hospital shows the children had severe burns of up to 75 per cent, with multiple organ failure.
The eight-year-old had burns on the face and his lower and upper limbs were charred, while the four-year-old's face was burnt, skin spillage and charred lower limbs.
The report says that parts of the bodies were taken for further examination.
Edited by A.N