‘My Brush With Death As A Crime Reporter In Kenya’

By Dominic Wabala

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 13- I have seen, smelt and courted death several times in my line of duty as a journalist but one day will forever remain etched in my mind.

Sometime in the late 90s and early 2000 while reporting crime and disaster for the Standard Group, I was assigned to cover a supposed abduction case.

There had been many reported cases of girl child abduction and defilement that police were seemingly unable to solve.

While at the Town House based newsroom along Kaunda street, we received reports that a man had been nabbed abducting a young girl within Korogocho slums.

The little girl had been wailing as the old man dragged her along (it turned out later to be his granddaughter).

A mob started baying for his blood forcing the old man to run to a nearby Kariobangi AP camp for protection with the mob hot on his heels.

At the camp, the little girl confirmed that the old man was indeed her grandfather but the blood thirsty mob could hear none of it.

They demanded to serve their own ‘justice’ on the “abductor.”

The old man reluctantly left the camp hoping the mob would let him and his granddaughter be but he was wrong.

One stone was thrown at him, then another and another and alas, the blood thirsty mob was having its way.

A Citizen TV crew that had been in the area attempted to rescue the man and bundled him into their van but they were pelted with stones forcing them to abandon the mission.

My photojournalist Martha Maingi and I arrived just as the Citizen crew were driving off.

Police from Kasarani and Muthaiga police stations arrived to save the man but the mob could hear none of it.

Reinforcements were called for and gun wielding ‘flying Squad’ officers arrived and took the old man away. He later succumbed to his injuries.

Angry for being denied an opportunity to lynch the ‘abductor’, the mob turned their wrath on provincial administration officers with whom we had sought refuge with at a kiosk.

The area chief who attempted to calm the mob down was hit with a stone on the head and collapsed in a heap as did a District Officer (DO).

An AP officer who was standing with us announced that he only had two bullets and his only option was to shoot at the menacing crowd. When he did, a woman in the crowd dropped dead further infuriating the mob.

Smelling death, I grabbed Martha Maingi’s camera, wrapped the strap around my wrist and told her that we had to get out of the place. I pointed at an opening and told her we needed to do a sprint for our lives.

I raised my hands up towards the crowd and showed them the camera pleading with them to lets us pass through.

Some of the people stopped throwing stones and urged us to run out. Martha was tagging on my shirt and I assumed she would be behind me.

I did a dash, jumped over a low wall and took cover behind a building as the crowd surged towards the kiosk where we had been sheltering.

Tracing Martha in the confusion wasn’t easy. It was a mobile free era.

Four hours later we found a weeping Martha who narrated how some thugs stripped her of her blouse.

This is a day I saw death and slipped out of its jaws.

Dominic Wabala has been a Crime, Security and Governance journalist for more than 2 decades. He has covered the war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia and is the current chairperson of the Crime Journalists Association of Kenya (CJAK).