Kenya:Baby smashed to death on floor

Linda Cherotich (right) and her mother Josephine Okumu speaking during the interview on March 25, 2014 at their Satellite home. Linda's husband killed her 4 month old son on Monday morning.

When a close relative picked him up and placed him on his lap that fateful Monday morning, baby Calvin Mbugua snuggled closer.

He played joyfully as the relative started changing his soiled diapers. Though aged only four months, the baby not only recognised the man but was also drawn by the show of tender care, that could only come from a relative.

The next minute, the very hands that the boy trusted for his protection and care turned against him as they hurled him to the floor, not once but twice.

And with that, young Mbugua became part of the statistics of death in the city, being one of the 10 people killed in Nairobi in separate tragedies over the last two days.

Events leading up to Mbugua’s death started when his mother, Linda Cherotich, went back to her mother’s house in Riruta, Nairobi on Saturday after she was allegedly assaulted by her lover the previous day.

She had moved to her parents’ house with the boy since he was still too young to remain with the man.

“Even after seriously assaulting me, I knew he would not let me leave. I lied to him that I was taking some maize to my mother and that I would be back. He checked to confirm that I had not carried my clothes and let me leave,” Cherotich told the Nation on Tuesday.

On Sunday she went back to the man’s house and was informed by neighbours that he had been seen there.

On Monday at around 7am while she was still sleeping in their one-roomed house, her lover opened the door but did not speak to her. Instead, he picked up the baby from a seat, cradled him and started changing his diapers.

Then all of a sudden, Cherotich said, the man lifted the child and smashed him against the floor several times and then run away.

The child’s grandmother, Josephine Okumu, heard screams from the house and rushed there. She found the child on the floor with her daughter in utter shock. “I picked up my grandson who was unconscious and went to the matatu stage to take him to the hospital. On the way, he hiccupped twice and fell silent. He was pronounced dead when we reached the hospital,” said Ms Okumu.

At the family’s home yesterday, the open shoes and a shawl left behind by the fleeing suspect were still at the scene, almost 24 hours after the tragedy that left the neighbourhood in shock.

Although they would be considered crucial evidence in investigations, policemen who visited the house had not collected and preserve the items, causing the family to doubts the quality of investigations.

The toddler’s death was one in a trail of deaths across the city. Police records indicate that nine other people were found dead in different parts of the city.