Francis Mureithi
13 May 2008
Nairobi — For the six years that Josiah Sigowo Kiprotich has worked as a security guard for various firms, he has enjoyed every bit of his work.
This is in spite of the fact that the work entails being on his feet for many hours and being always alert as he guards his employer's property
Barely a month ago, Sigowo, 36, landed a better paying job with one of the security firms in Nakuru Town and hoped to serve with zeal.
However, on April 27 his dreams of working with his new employer were abruptly cut short when people suspected to be Flying Squad officers sprayed the security firm's pick-up vehicle with bullets at Nakuru's Industrial Area. The guards were on their normal patrols.
Sigowo now has to walk with a limp as one of the bullets pierced into his shoe and went through his left heel.
His bandaged leg may never be the same again and as fate would have it, he may as well forget about ever working as a security guard for the rest of his life.
His first salary
The bullet is not likely be removed soon unless he gambles with his leg.
He requires a highly specialised and expensive operation to save his leg from amputation, but he had not even earned his first salary at the time of the shooting.
According to doctors at Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital where he was taken after the incident, the bullet is lying delicately in the bone marrow and any surgery to remove it may jeopardise the leg.
"After staying for two days in the hospital, the doctors told me that the bullet could not be removed as it has penetrated deep into the bone marrow and any surgery to remove it may permanently interfere with my leg," said Sigowo.
He must learn to live with a bullet tucked inside his body.
But as Sigowo goes through the pain, he is lucky to be alive to tell the story. His colleague at the back of the vehicle, Wilberforce Vincent Mbandikho, was not as lucky.
According to Sigowo, Wilberforce was shot three times as he came out of the rolling vehicle and died as soon as he arrived at the hospital.
The vehicle commander, who was in charge of the patrol that night, Mr Bernard Otieno, was seriously injured in the head and is in a coma. He has not uttered a word since that fateful night.
The driver, Mr Abraham Rotich, was the only occupant who escaped with minor injuries when his vehicle veered off the road and landed in a ditch.
Commit robbery
Mr Rotich said that after the vehicle rolled, its windscreen was shattered by a bullet and when it finally landed in the ditch, he managed to escape as bullets rained, missing him by inches.
The driver said he ran and climbed on top of a roof and hid. However, he was almost mistaken for a robber. He was saved by his official clothes, which he removed and threw to the people who were now baying for his blood, to prove that he was not out to commit a robbery.
The crowd sympathised with him and gave him first aid for the cut on his forehead, caused by the shattered windscreen.
He then took a boda boda (bicycle taxi) and went to the office where he reported the incident.
The guard who died had secured employment with the firm just five days earlier, and was upbeat on that night. He had patiently waited to join the company since February.
"I saw a lot of potential in the guard, and this was evident after the job interview. It is sad that he has been killed in the line of duty at such an early age," said the manager of Modern Security Company, Mr John Wafula.
He said his company is now demanding a thorough investigation into the shooting.
Red car parked
The three guards had come from patrolling two warehouses in Industrial Area at around 9pm when they saw a red car parked near one of the warehouses the company had installed alarm systems in.
Moments later, the red car started trailing them and, sensing danger, Mr Otieno instructed the driver to increase speed. The car followed them, flashing its lights.
Narrating his ordeal at the company's offices, Mr Sigowo vividly remembers the incident on Biashara Street.
"We shouted for help from the back of the vehicle as the gunshots increased, and when the vehicle rolled, I found myself in a ditch full of industrial waste," he recalls.
As he was writhing in pain and trying to come out of the ditch, he overheard someone saying in Kiswahili: "Ndio hao. There is still one who is still alive in the ditch. Let us finish him."
Sigowo says he recognised the speaker's accent as that of his dialect and immediately pleaded with him in his mother tongue to spare his life.
This saved him from the jaws of death, but not before he was called unprintable words . They then left him to continue suffering in the ditch for four hours before he was finally taken to hospital.
Later, he overheard another speaker communicate with others on a walkie talkie: "We have managed to gun down two, while two others are still missing."
Sigowo says he strongly believes their attackers were police officers because moments after the shootout, a police vehicle came and handed the people at the scene heavy jungle jackets, which they wore on top of their civilian clothes.
No evidence
Mr Wafula concurs. He says the postmortem report on the dead guard showed that he died from bullet wounds and the three bullets recovered from his body were from the Government stores.
Nakuru police commander Franchio Nyamatari said if investigations revealed that the police shot the guards and committed the offence, the law would take its course
But Mr Wafula asked: "How can the police investigate themselves?"
He also said that no evidence was recovered from the vehicle to indicate that his men may have been intending to commit a crime as the police are now claiming.
The police were allegedly tipped that a warehouse at Industrial Area was about to be broken into and suspected that the firm's vehicle was ferrying the would-be burglars.
He wondered why after the incident the police did not act promptly, forcing him to go and lodge complaints with the District Criminal Investigation Office and OCPD.
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