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Strathmore lecturer: No fight, I was just playing with my wife when she died


A postmortem exam on the body of the wife of a university lecturer arrested over her death has revealed that she had no physical injuries.

Chief Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor, who examined the body of Rebecca Gobi Mwachongo said the 27-year-old had fluid in the lungs.

“She also had a blood clot in the left atrium (in the heart) … but we cannot attribute this to anything at the moment,” Dr Oduor said, adding that samples from her body have been taken for further analysis.

Rebecca’s husband, Dr Fredrick Ogola — a Strathmore University lecturer — was arrested following her death on New Year’s Day.

JUST PLAYING

He said in an interview on Thursday that he was just playing with his wife and denied there was a fight between them.

He is detained at the Kabete Police Station after the court granted the police a 10-day custodial order to allow them to complete investigations into the death of his wife — Rebecca Gobi Mwachongo.

During an interview at the Dagoretti Police Station where he was initially detained, Dr Ogola denied killing the woman he said “I have loved her very much”.

He termed the death as “very unfortunate”.

“There was no fight. This was a play, she had asked me what my programme was and I told her that my plan was to drop the letters. She told me that I would not be going and I asked her what she would do to stop me,” Dr Ogola said adding that after that, his wife pushed him and he fell on their matrimonial bed.

“When a woman pushes you, you do not resist. She sat on me and tried to remove the phone from my pocket and I told her ‘Sweetheart you are going to tear my pocket’,” he said of the deceased, whom he said, was determined to confiscate the phone from him.

Dr Ogola said during the “play”, his wife suddenly exclaimed and fell back on the edge of the bed.

‘THIS WAS A JOKE’

“I thought this was a joke because we had been playing. I left the bedroom and rushed to deliver the letter and then I called the house help to ask her whether Becky was up taking care of the baby and she said ‘No’, so I rushed back and found her still down where she had fallen,” Dr Ogola said.

Dr Ogola took her to the MP Shah Hospital and later to the Aga Khan University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The don was arrested on Tuesday evening at his home in Lavington, and was taken to court on Wednesday, but did not take plea following a request by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to have him detained.

Dagoretti OCPD Rashid Mohammed said several people had been interrogated. He, however, refused to name them or give details of their accounts, saying that would jeopardize investigations.