Kilifi, KENYA: A man accused of defiling a 12-year-old girl in Tsanzuni village, Palakumi in Ganze sub-county has been burnt to death by an angry mob.
The man is said to be working in one of the butcher shops in Ganze town.
Reports indicated that the man whose identity is yet to be established, did the act on his way back to Ganze from Mariakani town to collect meat when he stopped and went to the dam to drink some water where the girl together with others was fetching water.
He parked his motorbike with meat on the side of the road and called the girl who seemed to be eldest amongst the others and took her to a nearby bush.
Area Nyumba Kumi Ambassador Jackson Baya told Baraka FM on Sunday that a passerby heard the voice of a girl screaming in an unusual manner in the bushes and decided to track the voice only to find the man on top of the girl.
“He found the man on top of the girl trying to strangle her neck and that is the time he confronted him and the suspect started running away but the man shouted for help from villagers who responded and surrounded him and later burnt him,” said Baya.
Baya added that the girl was found with foam around her mouth.
Two weeks ago somebody was reported to have been ambushing women and girls who go to fetch water and firewood in the bushes in a bid to rape them, and the villagers were yet to arrest him.
“When the man heard the girl screaming he made the bold move to go to the place because he thought it is the man who we are haunting only to find out that he is not the one, “said Baya.
Jumwa Pombe, mother to the victim said she had sent her three daughters to go get water from Katangani dam some minutes to seven o’clock in the morning but later heard villagers screaming and shouting about the suspect, little did she know her daughter was the victim.
The victim is her first firstborn daughter who is suffering from epilepsy.
“One has to wait for more than one hour before the water is enough to fetch and so one has to go early to queue on the line. The man went and asked my girls to give him drinking water, after that he went away and later came back and told my elder girl that I was calling her and she followed him. He later took another direction and pulled her in the bush,” said Pombe.
She said that her daughter is nursing a swollen throat and cannot eat.
Ganze OCPD Patrick Ngeiywa confirmed the incident and said that the man is not a local.
He said police arrived at the scene and found the man burnt beyond recognition.
“We have launched investigations and we are yet to identify the man because he is not a local,” said Ngeiywa.
The body has been taken to the Kilifi County Hospital Mortuary.
