- •Court found that the details by the victims were accurate and that the evidence remains indisputable.
- In the end, the court dismissed his claim of innocence, upholding the conviction and death sentence. The judgement was given on July 21.
Image: FILE
Christopher Sure, a preacher with the Lutheran Church, was leading intercessory prayers in the living room of his house on the night of August 17, 2004, before the unexpected happened, changing his life forever.
More than 12 people were present in his living room for the devotion. Some of his visitors were from out of the country.
Suddenly, both the front and back doors to his house were flung open and two people burst in, but not to join in the fellowship. They were there for violent robbery, committing sexual assault in their wake.
Samwel Odhiambo Olela would later be identified as one of the people who rudely interrupted the meeting, desecrated the moment of worship and carted away valuables.
Court papers show that while Olela did not wear a face mask, his co-perpetrator did. They were armed with lethal weapons including a gun.
Their first act was to order the 12 people in the living room to prostrate down before they got ransacked for valuables, including money, phones and watches. Sure’s car key for his Peugeot 504 was also taken.
To win their total compliance, the assailant who had a gun, showed the group a live bullet.
In Sure’s pocket, the thugs recovered Sh10,000 which they took. They also ransacked the house. They found a laptop computer and CD player which they took a way.
Done with the living room, they turned to the bedrooms where in one of them, Sure’s niece named MA was a sleep.
Court papers say she woke up with a sense of foreboding only to see someone standing by the door to the bedroom.
“Another one was frenetically ransacking the room. One had a torch which he flashed to illuminate the room. MA unsuccessfully tried to snatch the torch. One of the assailants furiously slapped her on the back and led her outside the room and into the sitting room where the rest of the victims lay on the floor. While outside the bedroom, the assailant demanded to know where the money was kept and he led MA back to the room to recover the money,” papers read.
Once back in the bedroom, MA lifted the mattress to get the money but the assailant changed his demand mid-stream: now he wanted her to quickly undress.
At a threat of death, the poor girl yielded, stripping herself naked and lay on the bed and the man went ahead to rape her.
As the assailant did his evil, MA took the time to make him up, and marked his key identifying features.
The assailants also ransacked the kitchen where there were little children but who were able to study their features well.
A few days later, the assailants abandoned the car in the area after the family reported the incident to the police.
Olela would be arrested two months later when the Oyugis police boss got tipped that he was at a local bar.
He was arraigned at a magistrate court where he got convicted of robbery with violence and the alternative charge of rape. He was sentenced to death.
His appeal at the High Court failed in 2011, with the judges holding that the evidence was ironclad, the description of his identifying features by the victims were exact, and that there was no contradiction in the prosecution’s case.
At the Court of Appeal, his state given lawyer argued that he was not properly identified and that he had not been linked to the robbery, say, using the stolen properties getting recovered from him.
In the end, the court dismissed his claim of innocence, upholding the conviction and death sentence. The judgement was given on July 21.