Police are investigating an incident in which a man swallowed poison that he had earlier sent his teenage son to buy in Villa, Embakasi.
The man's body was found next to a bottle of Lava Chemical that was opened and suspected to have been used in the suicide mission.
Police and residents said the victim, 49, first sent his 13-year-old son to a shop and asked him to buy the chemical to use in killing cockroaches.
They were the only people in the house.
When the boy brought the poison, the father told him to get out of the house as he wanted to spray it.
The boy obliged oblivious to what the father planned.
He came back a few minutes later and found the motionless body of his father sprawled on the sofa set with the chemical next to it.
The boy raised alarm and by the time neighbours came, the man had died.
"We are yet to know the motive for now," Nairobi police boss Adamson Bungei said.
"Police are investigating the incident."
Police were called to the scene and moved the body to the mortuary pending probe.
Cases of suicide have been on the rise in the past months at an alarming rate amid calls to address the trend.
The World Health Organisation says such cases are attributed to joblessness, the breakup of relationships or a death, academic failures or pressures.
Other causes are legal difficulties, financial difficulties, bullying, previous suicide attempts, history of suicide in a family, alcoholism and substance misuse, depression and bipolar disorder.
Globally, close to 800,000 people die of suicide every year with an estimated 78 per cent of cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries.
