AP kills man over Sh50 unofficial parking fee at Mama Lucy Hospital
A demand for unofficial Sh50 parking fee by security guards at the Mama Lucy Kibaki hospital led to the fatal shooting of a bodaboda rider who had volunteered to rush a sick child to the hospital.
Police and the hospital’s administration declined to give details of the shooting.
But witnesses said security guards let in Daniel Mburu Wangari and he parked at the hospital’s casualty entry as he rushed the two-and-a-half-year-old boy retrieved from a River in Korogocho slums into the emergency centre.
“They told him no one is allowed to park where he had parked and should, therefore, part with Sh50 which he did not have. His friends told him he can park outside where they had parked their bikes so he told the guards to let him take his bike outside the hospital,” said a witness.
“The guards called the police and claimed there was an unruly intruder in the hospital after he insisted on taking away his bike instead of paying the Sh50. The AP officers arrived while the guards were taking him into their security sentry at the gate. One of the officers cocked his gun and shoved the guards aside then shot through his chest.”
Korogocho slums
Mburu had offered to help a distraught neighbour Agnes Waheti to take the child to the hospital after she was referred there from a clinic in the Korogocho slums.
The child had been rescued by his mother almost drowning in a river. It was unimaginable that he would die first and leave the boy fighting for his life at the same hospital.
The child had fallen into a river while playing with friends and his mother caught up with him.
Mburu could not stand watching his neighbour’s child die for lack of means of transferring him from the clinic to the hospital.
“He saw me in distress after I got a referral from that clinic and told me to mount on his bike and brought me here. By the time we arrived, we had already been joined by four others but they did not follow us into the emergency. We took the child to the doctor and he was told to leave,” Waheti said.
“While in the doctor’s room, I saw a commotion and Daniel being dragged by security guards. I rushed to find out what was happening. I found them asking him why he got in with the motorbike. They took him to the security office then I heard a gunshot. He was then taken to the casualty already dead.”
City Mortuary
One of Mburu’s friends took the spent cartridge after she collected it from the scene of the shooting. Mburu’s body was taken to City Mortuary.
“It is very bad. That officer shot dead a man that had already been subdued by the guards and was right in their custody and walked away. I saw his colleague in sheer anger over the shooting. His mother has gone quiet after the death of his only son, she is no longer speaking,” said a witness.
The independent policing oversight authority [IPOA] spokesman Dennis Oketch said they had already dispatched a rapid response team to the scene to begin investigations.
Chaos erupted in the area as police engaged agitated youths in running battles after they staged riots outside the hospital baying for the killer officer’s blood.
Nairobi police commander Philip Ndolo, Kamukunji police and DCI commanders did not pick calls and were not at the scene.