On February 12, 2012, a former Kenya Power employee was found dead at Santonia Court which is located in the Kilimani area in Nairobi.
The woman who was identified as Careen Chepchumba was a friend to former TV news anchor Louis Otieno. She was found dead in her apartment in a case that remains unsolved even after a court ordered an inquest into her death.
Chief government pathologist Dr Johansen Odour said in an autopsy report to the court that Careen bled in the eyes and neck muscles due to pressure applied on her neck by the assailant.
“There was bleeding in the left eye, there was also bleeding on the neck muscles. We formed the opinion that death was due to lack of oxygen due to manual strangulation,” he said. He added that Careen could have been sexually assaulted by the assailant.
Apparently, Chepchumba was found dead in her apartment at Santonia Court on February 12 2012, a day after she indicated to her parents that she wanted to ditch Loius Otieno. Her father told an inquest she had gone on a borrowing spree to finance Louis Otieno’s flashy lifestyle.
“The cause of Careen’s death was not suicide … it was not accidental. The cause of death cannot be said to be undetermined. The cause was strangulation. These are inevitable findings,” then magistrate Charles Ondieki ruled.
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Fast forward to July 2020. Santonia Court, along Kirichwa Gardens Road, came back in the limelight for the wrong reasons after the body of Sheila Njeri Murage, 33, was discovered in the flowerbed on July 17 2020.
Sheila’s body was discovered in a flowerbed at Santonia Court by workers. Those who attended the scene said blood was oozing from her nose, and she had back injuries.
A postmortem examination report revealed that Sheila was sexually assaulted and died as a result of head injuries due to blunt force trauma.
Sheila was among at least four people who attended a party at the apartment on July 17. Her body was discovered the following day.
However, tenants at the apartment said they did not know her, but she was familiar as she had visited before.