In the recent years, student murders in Kenya have been rising at an unprecedented rate from the heartless murder of University of Nairobi School of Journalism master’s student Mercy Keino in 2011 to Tuesday’s brutal killing of Ms. Ivy Wangechi, a sixth-year medical student at Moi University.
Here are some of past incidences of students who were murdered and the circumstances in which they occurred.
Carol Ngumbu, 21
Student at Kenya Medical Training College, Karen Campus. Her body was found alongside that of IEBC ICT manager Chris Msando days after the duo went missing.
The bodies were found in a thicket in Kikuyu. The body of Ngumbu, who hailed from Gachie in Kiambu County, was naked, suggesting that she may have been raped before she was strangled to death.
This was one week to the 2017 General Election. Ngumbu’s elder sister Jedida Wanjiku told the media hat her younger sister and Mr Msando had been friends for months.
Faith Chepkirui
Chepkirui, a first-year student at Kaiboi Technical Training Institute, was stabbed three times by her boyfriend Mathew Kiptoo Yego, a second-year student at the same institution.
Their relationship had begun a few weeks earlier when Ms Chepkirui joined the college. Her attempts to walk out of the relationship ended in her murder.
Christine Maonga
In March, graduate student and high school teacher Christine Maonga was reportedly shot by her lover at her house in Navakholo in Kakamega County.
Maonga was set to enrol for training as an academic examiner. The suspect, Patrick Nyapara, an AP officer, is said to have been paying her school fees.
He was angered when he found out that Christine had abandoned him for another man. He went to her house and shot her three times.
Vennah Kemunto, 22
Kisii University student Vennah Kemunto was strangled to death by her 23-year-old boyfriend Samson Obwocha in September 2018 in her hostel room in Kisii County.
Obwocha, a boda-boda rider, later hanged himself. He left a suicide note saying he loved his girlfriend so much and had to kill her first before committing suicide. The motive was not established.
Cynthia Chelagat
Chelagat was in her final year of studying for a Bachelor of Agriculture degree at Egerton University’s Njoro campus when she was killed in February 2018.
Her boyfriend, Edmond Ruto, went to her house on the morning of February 19, 2018 where the two had a quarrel. Ruto then stabbed her six times, killing her instantly.
Mr Ruto was charged with murder in 2018 and held in police custody after he failed to raise a Sh300,000 bail.
Sharon Otieno, 26
Ms Otieno was a second-year student at Rongo University. She was abducted and killed when she was seven months pregnant.
Witnesses said Ms Otieno, together with former Nation journalist Barrack Oduor, were abducted by three men, bundled into a car before being driven off.
Fortunately, Mr Oduor escaped by jumping out of the moving vehicle. Otieno’s body would later be dumped at Kodera forest in Oyugis in neighbouring Homa Bay County.
Beryl Atieno, 28
In February this year, Paul Ochieng’, 21, who had been living with Form Two student Beryl Atieno, 18, for 10 months at Ober Village, Ndhiwa Sub-County, violently hit her on the head with a table leg and killed her, before hanging himself on the rafters of his house.