Kenyan police launched a massive search operation on Tuesday after they claim a man who confessed to killing and dismembering 42 women escaped from a Nairobi police cell along with a dozen other detainees.
Collins Jumaisi, 33, described by police as a “vampire, psychopath”, was arrested last month following the gruesome discovery of mutilated bodies in a rubbish heap in a slum in Kenya’s capital.
“Investigations have been launched and a major security operation is underway to capture the 13 suspects,” Kenya police spokeswoman Rasila Onyango told AFP.
In a separate statement, the police said they came to know about the incident when officers reached the police station cells around 5 am to serve breakfast to the inmates.
“Upon opening the cell door, they discovered that 13 prisoners had escaped by cutting through the wire mesh in the sunbathing area,” it said, referring to an area of the station where prisoners could get fresh air.
The escapees were Jumaisi and 12 others, who police said were of Eritrean descent and had been detained for being “illegally present immigrants.”
The police station is located in the Gigiri district of Nairobi, where the United Nations regional headquarters and several embassies are located.
This is the second time in the last six months that a suspect in a high-profile case has escaped from custody.
Kevin Kangethe, a Kenyan national accused of killing his girlfriend in the United States last year and leaving her body in an airport parking lot, fled from a police station in February and was captured about a week later.
Police in the spotlight
Jumaisi appeared in a court in the Kenyan capital on Friday, where a magistrate ordered him detained for 30 days to allow police to complete their investigations.
The Kenya National Commission for Human Rights (KNCHR) said last month that the bodies of ten murdered women were found tied in plastic bags in a waste dump at an abandoned mine in Mukuru, Nairobi.
The gruesome discovery has stunned Kenyans, who have already recovered from the so-called Shakohola Forest massacre following the discovery of more than 400 bodies in mass graves near the Indian Ocean coast.
A Kenyan cult leader accused of urging his followers to prepare for the end of the world and starve themselves to “meet Jesus” faces multiple charges, including terrorism, murder and child cruelty, along with dozens of co-defendants.
Jumaisi was detained on the morning of July 15 near a Nairobi bar where he was watching the Euro 2024 football final.
After his arrest, Directorate of Criminal Investigations chief Mohammed Amin said Jumaisi had confessed to killing 42 women over a two-year period from 2022 and that his wife was his first victim.
“We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin said at the time.
The dumped bodies have shed new light on Kenya’s police force, as they were found just 100 metres from a police station.
The state-funded KNCHR said in July it was conducting its own investigation into the Mukuru case because of “the need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.
Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority, also said it was investigating whether police had any involvement or “any failure to act” to prevent the killings.
Kenyan police are often accused by human rights groups of carrying out unlawful killings or running murder squads, but very few cases have been brought to justice.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
