Duncan Kimathi: Former USIU-Africa Student Sentenced to Death for Murder of Colleague

The Director of Public Prosecutions secured a death sentence against Duncan Livingstone Kimathi, a former USIU-Africa student, over the murder of fellow student Sarah Akello AruwaKimathi and accomplices abducted Akello and contacted her family demanding KSh 100,000 in ransom before killing her in Kiambu County in 2012Prosecutors called 17 witnesses to establish how the victim was lured, abducted, and subsequently strangled to deathPAY ATTENTION: Mark TUKO.co.ke as a preferred source, and our content will appear higher in your Google feed!

A Nairobi court has handed down a death sentence to Duncan Livingstone Kimathi, a former student at the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), after finding him guilty of murdering his fellow student Sarah Akello Aruwa in a 2012 kidnapping-for-ransom case.

Justice Kanyi Kimondo delivered the sentence upon concluding that Kimathi, now 37, had acted with malice aforethought when he murdered Akello between June 30 and July 1, 2012, in the Kiamako area of Githunguri, Kiambu County.

At the time of her disappearance, Akello was a final-year International Relations student at USIU-Africa.

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She had told a friend she was heading to meet a man she had previously come across at the university library.

Her notebook contained the name of a person identified as Daniel Muriithi, along with a telephone contact, but the court established that Kimathi had no connection to Muriithi and concluded the identity had been fabricated as part of a scheme to lure her.

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After she was taken, her captors contacted the family using her own mobile phone. Her mother, Hellen Atieno Aruwa, testified that she received a call from a man demanding KSh 100,000 for her daughter's release.

She managed to negotiate the figure down to KSh 70,000 before reporting the incident at Kasarani Police Station. Akello's boyfriend similarly told the court that when he called her phone, a man answered and demanded that the ransom be sent to her mobile money account.

Prosecution, led by Millicent Kigira, presented 17 witnesses during the trial. Investigators recovered Akello's undergarments and a blood-stained top from a house in Savannah linked to Kimathi's girlfriend, Wairimu, who was a co-accused.

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Wairimu later absconded after being released on bail, prompting the court to proceed with the trial in her absence.

A postmortem examination revealed that Akello had sustained a laceration at the back of her head and bruises on her neck, with her tongue protruding.

The cause of death was determined to be manual strang-ulation through neck compression.

In his judgment, Justice Kimondo found the circumstances of the abduction and killing demonstrated a deliberate and premeditated plan.

Kimathi was convicted of murder contrary to Section 203 as read with Section 204 of the Penal Code and sentenced to death.

Kai Eli (Politics and current affairs editor) Eli Kai is currently working with TUKO as a politics and current affairs editor. He has six years of experience in digital journalism. Eli joined Tuko.co.ke in 2021. Email: eli.odaga@tuko.co.ke