Members of the public mill around a scene where a man's body was found lying at Koma village in Matungulu, Machakos county, on June 15, 2026.
The three people whose bodies were retrieved from a thicket in Kathiani, Machakos County, on Monday might have been murdered elsewhere, Kathiani subcounty police commander George Kashmir has said.
Addressing reporters after the bodies of a woman and children were retrieved from the thicket at Wandathe village in Kathiani subcounty, Kashmir said it was an isolated case in the area.
"We received reports on the bodies yesterday. It was difficult to retrieve the bodies due to the terrain of the area. Today, we managed to retrieve the bodies that included that of a woman, a girl and another with missing parts," Kashmir said.
The bodies were discovered after police officers recovered a child's leg from the same village on Sunday.
Kashmir said police made the recovery after a woman reported that she had found her dog eating the leg in her homestead.
Police responded to the scene and launched a search for the body from which the leg had been removed.
Kashmir said a man later reported that he had stumbled on two bodies while grazing livestock in the same forest.
This prompted a police search, with the help of residents, leading to the retrieval of the three bodies on Monday.
A fourth body was retrieved by officers from the neighbouring Matungulu subcounty in Machakos County.
The body of a man, who was not immediately identified, was retrieved from a forest in Koma village, Matungulu subcounty, on Monday.
Police said the body had head injuries when it was retrieved.
The body was removed to a local mortuary awaiting identification and an autopsy.
"As police, we talked to members of the public. That, we must protect our area. We don't want the area to be a dumping site for bodies," Kashmir said.
Elsewhere in neighbouring Makueni County, police have launched investigations into an incident in which a one-year-old child was killed by an elephant near St. Anne's Secondary School in Kiboko on Monday.
Police said several people, including the minor's mother, were injured in the incident.
The body was removed to a local mortuary.
The incident led to high tension among residents, who protested over what they termed increased human-wildlife conflict in the area.
KWS officers responded to the scene in two helicopters to drive away the elephants that have been around for weeks.
Human-wildlife conflict is severe in the Kiboko-Kibwezi area.
Kiboko is right on the Tsavo-Chyulu corridor, so elephant herds pass through farms often, especially during the dry season when they search for water and food.
Crops and homesteads near the school get hit.
KWS usually dispatches a Rapid Response Unit and uses helicopter hazing to push herds back into Tsavo in such cases.
It also compensates families through the Human-Wildlife Conflict Compensation Scheme for death, injury and crop damage.
