- Shatuma's father described her daughter as a well-behaved and quiet person.
- He says she never took part in the anti-government protests.
Image: FAMILY
In a community that honours their dead more than the living, the family of Isaac Shatuma is shattered.
He can neither resume work nor his children return school until his daughter, whose body is being held by police, is buried.
Twenty-four-year-old Brenda Shatuma was among those whose mutilated bodies was found in a Kware dumpsite in Nairobi in July.
But since the news of her disappearance filtered back home in Kakamega on July 10, and later she was confirmed dead, the family cannot engage in any activity.
“According to our culture, once a home is bereaved, nothing happens until closure is afforded to the family. We cannot do anything now,” the dejected father told the Star.
Shatuma works with Butali Sugar Company and has been on leave which elapses on September 12. He is worried at the slow pace of ongoing investigations.
He says he has a daughter who is a KCSE candidate who cannot resume schooling given the situation.
Shatuma says when DNA samples were taken from him and his wife on August 19, he was told he should wait for two weeks to hear from the police but that is not forthcoming.
“The fact is that my home is bereaved, everything is at a standstill and it is also expensive to host village and clan delegations. Police need to give us the body so we mourn and conclude this thing,” he said.
Shatuma says his deceased daughter was a student as Shamberere Technical Training Institution studying information technology when in April this year, she travelled to the city for an attachment.
They would speak on phone frequently when she asked for financial support. In fact, their last conversation was about her request for Sh3,500 which he sent to her.
But on July 10 Shatuma was informed about her disappearance from Donholm, where she had moved to stay with a relative.
On August 13, the Director of Criminal Investigations headquarters reach out to him through his local assistant chief, asking that he travels to Nairobi with his wife for their DNA samples.
“They did not tell us why this was needed. They never gave a hint of what awaited us given that our daughter had been missing.”
On August 19, Shatuma and his wife went to the Nairobi Funeral Home (formerly City Mortuary), where they informed about a body that needed to be identified.
“No one ever told us before we went to City mortuary about my daughter. They took us into the mortuary and we viewed the body and identified it,” he says.
The body, he adds, was badly mutilated and decomposed and it took much effort to identify it.
“I was able to identify the body using her teeth. It is clear that my daughter was brutally murdered. Whatever happened to her, she must have undergone much pain before her death."
Shatuma described her daughter as a calm, reserved, well-behaved and quiet person who never provoked anyone.
He says she never took part in the anti-government protests, and it is a puzzle why someone would murder her.
“The police suggested to us that it is possible that someone lured her with a false promise of a job and then slaughtered her. I don’t understand why that would be the case.”
The father says when she went missing, the relative she stayed with had left her in the house but when he came back, found the house locked and her phone was ringing but not being picked.