Taxi career is proving a jinxed business considering the drivers who are facing murder and rape charges in Nairobi.
Stephen Maina, Michael Githae and Davies Ochieng’ all have two things in common. First, they are in the taxi business. Second, they are all suspected of murder.
Davies Ochieng’ is the cab driver who picked up Mildred Odira, a Foresight Company employee, from her Kariobangi South home at dawn on January 29. He was to take the ailing Odira to Uhai Neema Hospital.
What happened from the moment she stepped into the car are obscure, but her lifeless body would be found abandoned near Allsops on Thika Road.
The role of Michael Githae, who owns a car-hire company, in disposing of Mary Wambui’s body is one of the trails being followed by detectives investigating the killing. Wambui was murdered at the apartment of her husband’s secret lover Judy Wangui at Fourways Junction Estate on Kiambu Road.
On the night of January 26, Githae, in a confession to police, claims he, accompanied by Wangui, transported the body of Wambui in his car to Mugutha, where they dumped it at a dam. The duo later drove to Gitambaya, where they discarded the murder weapons in a thicket.
In an insidious plot that lasted more than six hours and covered more than 85 kilometres of road, the nocturnal pair would then proceed to Githunguri before heading to Kwa Maiko, in the heart of Kiambu County, where they abandoned the victim’s car.
Meanwhile, Stephen Maina has been in police custody for more than a week now after a Makadara Court granted investigators 14 days to gather evidence. Maina and six others are being investigated for their role in the mysterious death of Dandora-based human rights activist Caroline Mwatha.
While a post-mortem report last week showed Mwatha bled to death after a botched abortion, detectives are investigating possible foul play and Maina is one of the prime suspects.
The unresolved murder of lawyer Willie Kimani, his client and a taxi driver, whose bodies were found floating in River Athi at the Ol Donyo Sabuk bridge, 30 kilometres east of Thika, in July 2016, has become the yardstick of intriguing storylines of a taxi ride turned tragic.