A 53-year-old police officer who shot dead his wife using 11 bullets during a fight over a wallet and an ATM Card has been sentenced to serve 30 years in jail by the High Court in Eldoret.
Justice Reuben Nyakundi sentenced Benard Ndege to serve the jail term for the offense committed on the night of March 9, 2019, at Soy police lines in Uasin Gishu.
Justice Nyakundi said the prosecution had proved the case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt that as a police officer, he breached the trust bestowed on him and misused a government firearm to settle a domestic quarrel yet the gun was not intended for such a purpose.
The couple’s nine-year-old son was in the house at the time of the incident and testified against his father alongside five police officers who lived as neighbours at the Soy police lines and witnessed or heard a quarrel between the two just before the shooting.
One of the officers saw the two arguing about the wallet and the ATM outside their house and also heard the accused threatening to kill the woman if she did not surrender the items to him.
The couple then ran back to their house where gunshots were heard.
Ndege however had denied that he was the one who shot his wife and linked the murder to an attacker he did not know.
The accused also claimed that all the time he had hidden his gun below a mattress in their house and that he always had a good relationship with his deceased wife.
But Justice Nyakundi in his judgment dismissed Ndeges' claims as an alternative narrative he had tried to create despite overwhelming physical and scientific evidence linking him to the murder.
“The prosecution's case presents a tapestry of evidence that speaks with compelling clarity. A witness saw the accused threaten to kill the deceased and there is forensic evidence of the recovered cartridges and along with ballistic analysis,” the judge said.
The judge noted that the sum of all evidence brought forward presented an unassailable picture of premeditated action by the accused.
Nyakundi said the accused was a trained law enforcement officer who understood the lethal consequences of his actions but made a deliberate choice to employ his service weapon against his spouse.
“The totality of evidence permits only one reasonable conclusion. That Benard Arabu Ndege acting with clear premeditation and malice aforethought, committed the offense of murder,” Justice Nyakundi said.
The judge noted that the manner in which the killing was done demonstrated exceptional brutality with postmortem evidence indicating that the deceased was shot more than nine times in the head and chest.
“The crime was also committed in the presence of the convict’s minor son who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting and stated that his father had killed his mother,” Nyakundi said.
The judge noted that the murder would undoubtedly cause severe psychological trauma to the child who had not only lost his mother but witnessed his father’s role in the death.
Nyakundi noted that in Kenya homicide had reached unproportional levels where in three months of 2024, more than 97 women lost their lives in very unclear circumstances.
He said the right to life must be protected by all and that those who commit such murders must be punished as per the law.
Nyakundi also noted that the accused had initially absconded after being released on bond and that he had not shown any remorse but instead sought to distance himself from the crime.
“I order that you serve 30 years in jail but I am not the final say because you have the right to appeal if you desire,” Nyakundi said.
