Until Sunday, August 20, Michael Mwaniki, 23, was
Nairobi’s most wanted criminal.
Known by his alias ‘Mwanii Sparta’, the Kayole Gaza
gang leader was shot dead alongside one of his accomplices at his hideout
in Witeithie, Kiambu County.
Until his death last Sunday, detectives had been trailing
him and his gang for months.
According to the police, it was not an easy task to track
him down because he was callous while executing his evil schemes.
Besides being ruthless, Mwaniki is said to have been crafty
and would be quick to eliminate a competitor or anyone he suspected was spying
for the authorities.
“Mwaniki at one point killed two colleagues for befriending
his wife Claire, who has since been killed,” a senior officer who did not want
to be named told the Capital FM News investigative team.
“It was not an easy task to get him. He has foot soldiers
who would always alert him every time we would plan a raid,” the detective
added.
Some of Mwaniki’s foot soldiers are police officers who
benefitted from his proceeds of crime.
But how did police establish his whereabouts?
Reports indicate that detectives infiltrated the Gaza gang
through an informer.
On Sunday morning, Mwaniki had contacted the gang’s
ammunition supplier asking for a delivery later in the afternoon.
The supplier was the police informer as established by Capital
FM News.
“As soon as our informer alerted us about his hideout and
that they were to meet that afternoon, we prepared a team and we had hoped that
he will be arrested together with the rest of the criminals. But we went there cautiously
since they were armed,” the detective revealed.
At around 2 pm, the informer accompanied by a team of armed
police officers in plain clothes arrived at Mwaniki’s hideout in Thika where
they met ‘face to face’.
According to the detective, Mwaniki and one of his
accomplices had gone to one of the residences to “smoke weed. They did not know
who we were.”
Upon seeing suspicious faces in his ‘kingdom’, Mwaniki
suspected something was wrong, removed his Ceska pistol and started firing at
them.
“A fierce shootout ensued and in the process, both were
killed…the Gaza leader was dead,” the detective narrated.
The Ceska pistol serial number was A879675, belonging to the
army. Police officers also recovered 21 rounds of ammunition.
“They might have stolen from an army officer…” the officer
said.
In the house, there were six others gang members who were
armed with an AK-47, stolen from two police officers they had killed two days
before within the same area. They managed to escape.
“We have profiled them…we know their names and a little bit
of their history,” he said.
Hours after the raid, the police informer was killed.
“He made a huge mistake…he went back to them without
informing us at an unknown location but still within Thika. They brutally
killed him,” the officer said.
According to the police, the informer who had served a
jail sentence before he was released, was tortured and strangled to death.
“Though he was not seen during the raid, they must have
known that he was the one who spied on them.”
Officer Commanding Kayole Police Division (OCPD) Joseph
Gichangi says the criminal gang still poses a major security challenge to the
residents but “we have managed to dismantle the group.”
“We will not stop until the Gaza group is dismantled
completely,” he said.
“We shall not allow them to have a comfort zone in Kayole.”
