•Two witnesses tell Eldoret court suspect Naftali Kinuthia had sent text messages to a friend, saying he would take revenge by doing something resulting in death.
• Some texts messages allegedly send to Wangechi’s friend were read in court.
Image: COURTESY:
Moi University medical student Ivy Wangechi had received death threats before she was hacked to death allegedly by a spurned suitor.
Wangechi failed to report the threats to police days before her murder.
Two witnesses told the High Court murder suspect Naftali Kinuthia had sent text messages saying he would take revenge by doing something bad that would end in death.
Some of the text messages allegedly sent to Wangechi’s friend were read in court.
Justice Stephen Githinji is hearing the murder trial against Kinuthia who has denied killing Wangechi on April 9, 2019, outside the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in broad daylight.
He allegedly hacked her with an axe and stabbed her.
The witnesses who appeared in court were two female friends and former school mates of Ivy. They asked not to be named.
One of the witnesses said she was a close friend of Ivy's and knew Kinuthia who had sent her several messages concerning his relations with Wangechi.
Kinuthia would ask her to communicate the messages to Ivy because she had blocked his calls.
In one of the messages, Kinuthia allegedly sent to the witness, he said, “I gave her a chance to choose light but she chose darkness." The witness said she considered the messages a threat.
In another message to her, Kinuthia wrote that he would take revenge because he had given Wangechi money, which he wanted refunded.
While being cross examined by Kinuthia's lawyers, the witness said she asked Wangechi to report the messages to the police.
“She told me it was not necessary because she thought Kinuthia was not the type of person who would go to the extent of harming her,”she said.
She told the court that to her knowledge Kinuthia and Wangechi did not have an intimate relationship but the suspect would write messages suggesting hey had a love relationship.
The witness said Kinuthia would send money to Wangeci without being asked to do so and he would sometimes travel to Eldoret to see her without advance notice.
The second witness was a doctor, close friend and college mate of the final-year victim. She told Justice Githinji that Wangechi took the threats to her life lightly.
The doctor told the court she pleaded with her to report the threats to the police.
The doctor recalled how the accused person travelled from Nairobi where he worked to visit Wangechi in Eldoret. Several times he would buy dinner for the three of them at one of the more expensive restaurants on the outskirts of town.
“He would come and take us for dinner and paid all the bills before driving us back to our university hostel. He did not exhibit a character of a violent or cruel person for the period I knew him through Wangechi,” the doctor told the judge.
Kinuthia denied involvement in the killing when he was arraigned before the High Court in Eldoret two years ago.
The suspect has been in Eldoret GK remand prison since he was arrested on April 9, 2019, in connection with the killing.
Kinuthia allegedly hacked Wangechi twice on the head with the axe and efforts by boda boda riders save the student failed as he threatened them with the weapon.
He was later attacked by a mob and beaten before police officers on patrol came to his rescue and took him to the hospital for treatment. The trial continues.
(Edited by V. Graham)