Bursts of dark emotion filled the courtroom on
Wednesday as Terezah Njeri, widow of the late Beijing Olympics men marathon
gold medallist Samuel Kamau Wanjiru, narrated the events that transpired on the
night she lost her champion husband.
In a gripping testimony, a tearful Njeri told
the court that the news of her husband’s demised only filtered through to her
while she sat at the Nyahururu police cells on May 16, 2011 where she spent a
night.
“I only
learnt of Kamau’s demise in the morning at around six o’oclock, while in the
cells I overhead an officer from night patrol tell his colleagues that Kamau
passed on in the night,” Terezah said, then burst to tears.
The facts by Terezah emerged during her turn in
the witness stand telling the court what she knew about the death of Wanjiru
that remains a mystery seven years after falling from the height of his
balcony.
She told the court that two days before
Wanjiru’s death, she had travelled from Ngong to Nyahururu where she had gone
to pick school fees and birth certificates belonging to their children from her
husband.
On arrival Wanjiru was not there but she waited.
On the fateful night, Terezah had visited a
cousin who lived a few miles away (about 10 minutes’ walk) from her Muthaiga
home in Nyahururu.
She and the family of the relative had supper
before she was dropped at her home at around 10:30pm. On arrival she noted that
Kamau was home as indicated by the presence of his car in the parking lot. It
had not been there when she left during the day.
“When I got into the compound through the small
gate, I went straight to the servants’ quarter where I got some tea in a cup
and went to my house. I went straight upstairs to our bedroom which was not
locked.
“On pushing the door, I placed the cup of tea on
a stool beside our bed. To my surprise, a lady jumped from the bed and seized
me by the neck, asking what I was doing in her house yet I had mine in Nairobi.
Then, it hit me she was sleeping with my husband,” she narrated.
According to Njeri, all these exchanges occurred
while Wanjiru was ‘dead’ asleep. She decided to leave the bedroom and locked
the metal door behind her since the bedroom main door had no lock.
-‘Nikiruka
hapa utaniona’-
The widow told Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi
that on her way to the gate, Wanjiru emerged from upstairs through the balcony
which was directly facing the gate; and ordered her to open the door in vain.
By this time Njeri had even possessed a bunch of keys from the custody of the
home’s guards at the gate.
“Wanjiru told me, ‘Kuja ufungue mlango ama nikiruka hapa utaniona,’ (come open the door, otherwise if you make me jump you will not
like it), the court was told.
Terezah decided to leave the compound and ran
back to their relative. Later, she received a police call to report to
Nyahururu police station. By this time she had been told by a male relative
that Wanjiru had fallen off the balcony.
On arrival at the station, she was put in the
police land cruiser and taken back to her compound after Wanjiru was taken to
hospital by police officers.
The Police collected samples of evidence from
the scene of crime where she says to have noted some blood on the ground but
did not go into the house.
She was then driven back to the station where
she was put to task to write a statement on what had transpired prior to
Wanjiru alleged falling from the balcony.
Terezah was then put into a police cell, the
officers having confiscated her phone. She told the court that when she heard
that her husband fell from the balcony, she asked the police if she could visit
him in the hospital but she was denied the opportunity.
Even that morning when she overheard of the
husband demise, the police could not let free until at around 10 o’oclock when
the police escorted her to Nyahururu District hospital where she found her
husband’s body laying lifeless in the morgue.
She told the court that she was consulted on
where the body would be preserved for which she proposed that it be transferred
to Lee Funeral homes in Nairobi.
Terezah, termed as key and the witness with
congest testimony that will help court big time in determining exactly what
killed Wanjiru was stepped down for today due to time constraint.
The will continue with her testimony when the
inquest resume in November, 7th and 8th 2017.
