Mombasa, KENYA: A section of University of Nairobi Mombasa campus students have threatened to take unspecified measures to avenge the death of their colleague who was lynched together with his cousin by a community vigilante group in Mtopanga area of Kisauni Sub-county on Sunday night.
The students who were demonstrating on Friday gave the police a 1-week ultimatum to bring the murderers to book.
“We have given police an ultimatum of a week to complete the investigations and arrest the culprit’s, failure to which we will take the law into our own hands.” student’s leader Amos Kimanzi said.
The student 26-year-old Samuel Odemba who was a fourth-year law student at the University of Nairobi (Mombasa branch) together with his cousin Kennedy Onyango were attacked before their bodies were set ablaze after a boda-boda rider mistakenly branded them as motorbike thieves.
Students to demonstrate over colleague lynched in Kisauni
According to eyewitnesses, Odemba and his cousin were drunk and confused their motorbike when the boda-boda rider found them struggling to start it.
The boda-boda rider raised alarm and a vigilante group descended on them with machetes before burning their bodies.
After the lynching, the boda-boda riders could not account for one of the motorbikes which belonged to Odemba and his cousin.
Mombasa deputy governor William Kingi who was demonstrating together with the students has called upon police officers to investigate the increased cases of mob justice incidents in Mombasa in order to ascertain where the problem is.
“I urge the students to remain calm and allow the authorities mandated to carry investigations do their work'” said Kingi.
