Red-faced Kenyan police detained eight of their own officers on Tuesday and launched a manhunt after a man accused of murdering and dismembering 42 women and escaping from a Nairobi police cell with a dozen others.
Collins Jumaisi, 33, a vampire and a psychopath described by police, was detained last month after the shocking discovery of mutilated bodies at a landfill in a Nairobi slum.
Jumaisi and the other 12 people, all Eritreans, looked to have fled by cutting through a wire mesh roof at the police station.
“Our preliminary investigations indicate that the escape was aided by insiders,” Acting National Police Chief Gilbert Masengeli said in a statement.
He told reporters that eight officers on duty at the time had been suspended and “placed in custody”, and that the Internal Affairs Unit was looking into the situation.
Police claimed they found the breakout while making a normal visit to the cells at 5 a.m. to bring the detainees breakfast.
“Upon opening the cell door, they found that thirteen inmates had broken free by severing the wire mesh in the basking bay,” police stated, alluding to a covered courtyard where inmates were provided with access to fresh air within the station.
Police stated that four other Eritreans who did not flee were assisting with the inquiry.
The 12 Eritreans had been arrested for entering Kenya unlawfully, they added. The police station is situated in the affluent Gigiri neighbourhood of Nairobi, which is also the location of several embassies and the regional office of the UN.
This is the second time in less than six months that a suspect in a high-profile case has escaped custody.
Kevin Kangethe, a Kenyan native accused of murdering his fiancée in the United States last year and abandoning her body in an airport parking lot, left a police station in February before being apprehended about a week later.
Jumaisi appeared in court in Kenya’s capital on Friday, and the magistrate ordered that he be kept for another 30 days to allow police to complete their investigations.
Mohamed Amin, the chief of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, said following Jumaisi’s arrest on July 15 that he confessed to murdering 42 women over a two-year period beginning in 2022, with his wife being the first victim.
“We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin stated at the time. Jumaisi claimed to have been assaulted and tortured, his lawyer told AFP last month.
In a dump in an abandoned quarry in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru, ten slaughtered female remains wrapped in plastic bags were discovered, according to a report released last month by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).
Kenyans were taken aback by the gruesome finding, as they were still in shock over the Shakahola woodland slaughter, which left over 400 victims found in mass graves close to the coast of the Indian Ocean.
A cult leader from Kenya is charged with encouraging his members to commit suicide by starvation in order to get ready for the end of the world and to “meet Jesus.”
He and several other defendants are accused of terrorism, murder, and child abuse, among other offences.
The Mukuru discovery cast a new spotlight on Kenya’s police service, as the victims were discovered barely 100 metres (yards) from a police station. The state-funded KNCHR announced in July that it was conducting its own inquiry into the Mukuru case because “there is a need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.
The Independent Police Oversight Authority, Kenya’s police oversight body, has previously said that it was investigating any potential police participation or a possible “failure to act to prevent” the killings.
Rights groups frequently accuse Kenyan police of being hit squads or of carrying out illegal killings, but very few of these accusations have resulted in prosecution.
Conclusion
This incident is a severe indictment of the current state of law enforcement in Kenya. It calls for not only immediate action to recapture Jumaisi and the other escapees but also a thorough investigation into the broader systemic issues that allowed such an escape to happen.
The Kenyan government must take decisive steps to restore public trust by ensuring accountability, enhancing security measures, and addressing the deep-rooted problems within its law enforcement agencies.
