The High Court has sentenced to death a father who splashed inflammable liquid inside his estranged wife’s shop that landed on her three year old child.
After splashing the inflammable liquid, the man then lit a match on the shop eventually causing the child’s death. Justice Jessie Lessit convicted Victor Kennedy Gichuru and ordered him to serve death sentence as provided by law after she found him guilty of a murder charge.
The offence was committed on May 22,2009 in Githurai 44, estate in Nairobi county. The judge in her ruling said witnesses established a clear pattern from the time he visited the shop early in the morning before the incident, held a family photograph of himself, his ex-wife, another child who survived with burns and the deceased and announced to them that he would do something bad, to the time he threw a flammable liquid at them and set the shop ablaze.
“I find that the accused actions leading upto the striking of the match to light the fire is proof that the accused had formed an intention to either cause death or grievous harm to the victims. The person the accused intension to harm has not been clearly established, whether he intended death or grievous harm to any particular family member or all of them,” justice Jessie Lessit said while handing Gichuru the death sentence!
