BY SAM ALFAN.
A middle age woman has been convicted of murder by the high court criminal division court in Nairobi for battering her cousin’s daughter and will await her punishment next month.
Justice Jessie Lesiit found Eunice Wambui guilty of killing the five-year old girl by inflicting serious injuries on her body between September 24 and October 30, 2014 when her mother was away in The Sudan in search of employment.
Wambui had telephoned her cousin Njeri Wanja on November 1, 2014 and asked her to return to Kenya because her daughter had been admitted at Neema Hospital for vomiting and Diarrhea. Two days later, the mother went to view the body at the Kenyatta University mortuary where she saw old and fresh wounds.
The matter was reported at the Kasarani police station following findings by the pathologist that the child had suffered internal and external wounds.
The Judge dismissed assertions by Wambui that the child was suffering from a skin disease and that the medication given to her had caused itchiness, blisters and wounds.
“The injuries were severe. There is no way that Wambui could have failed to see them. They were bad enough to need medical intervention. They were many old ones, about one month old, according to the doctor and many more much fresher. The only inference the court can make is that it is the accused person who had sole custody of the child at the time the injuries were inflicted on her. The denial by the accused person that the child was never battered cannot be true, reasonable or believable,” Justice Lesiit observed.
“I find Wambui’s defence an after-thought and bare denial. I find that the accused person was making up a case by portraying the child’s mother as a difficult person to live with and who had been rejected by her maternal aunties,” The Judge pointed out.
“There was no justification for the attacks on the deceased. It cannot pass as discipline. The pathologist found multiple extensive and deep injuries which ruled out discipline of the child. I find that the accused person battered the deceased, causing her severe injuries from which she suffered before she succumbed and died.
“I find Wambui’s defence neither plausible nor reasonable. I reject it in total,” the Judge said and ordered her remanded in custody awaiting her mitigation and sentencing.
