Sharon’s death reignites debate on campus girls’ fatal love for ‘sponsors’
The murder of 26-year-old Rongo University student, Sharon Otieno, has rekindled past incidents of campus girls who ended up dead as a result of illicit affairs with older men.
Sharon was kidnapped on Monday alongside Nation journalist Barack Oduor moments after being lured out of a hotel in Rongo around 7.35pm by Governor Okoth Obado’s Personal Assistant Michael Oyamo.
The journalist escaped by jumping out of the moving vehicle but Sharon’s body was found in Kodera Forest in the wee hours of Wednesday.
Sharon’s murder had revived talk about university student Mercy Keino, 25, who was found dead along Waiyaki Way after attending a party hosted by the then Juja MP William Kabogo.
A public inquest was formed to look into the cause of death and five years later six people, who had been implicated in the murder – including Kabogo – were cleared.
Other students who have crawled back into the news include Carol Ngumbu, 21, who was murdered just days to the general election in August 2017 alongside the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission ICT Manager Chris Msando.
FOUND DEAD
Carol’s body was found few metres away from Msando’s in Muguga Forest in Kikuyu with marks on the neck. A postmortem later confirmed that she died of strangulation.
More than a year before that, in May 2016, Cheryl Kitonga escaped death by a whisker after meeting businessman Jacob Juma moments before his car was sprayed with bullets resulting to his death.
The student, alongside a taxi driver who dropped her home after the meeting, were the last people who saw the late Juma alive before he was found dead in his car off Ngong Road.
The four – Sharon, Mercy, Carol and Cheryl – have reignited the debate on campus girls hanging out with older men almost always at a fatal cost.
The internet is divided on whether campus girls have lost their morals or it is the society that has birthed ‘sponsors’ through dead marriages.
Three of the four paid the price with their lives and in all cases their kin have stated that they were simply searching for jobs and business opportunities by hanging out with the prominent people.