Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City
The insecurity situation along the Luo – Nandi border that has been escalating in recent months is likely to improve following the gunning down of an armed thug by policemen in Nandi Hills town this week.
Jack Kispang who is suspected to have been ex-security personnel was on Monday this week trailed by detectives more than 10 hours from Cheptiret to Nandi hills town where he and his accomplices plans to stage a robbery of a supermarket were botched.
Detectives confronted the suspected robbers when they drew a pistol and threatened to shoot the workers at the supermarket and ordered them to surrender. Kipsang was armed with a Ceska pistol. The officers shot him several times at a close range. His companions fled and were still being hotly pursued by policemen.
A police source in Nandi County said the deceased is suspected to have been the leader of a heavily armed gang who were behind a spate of night attacks and killings in Nandi Hills Sub-County.
So far the gang has killed two senior managers in the tea estates within a period of two months.
The same gang, last Saturday, killed 70-year-old tea farmer Paul Malakwe Arap Rop. The wealthy farmer was attacked at his home, located at Chepotik village several kilometers outside Nandi hills town.
Police Chief in the area Jacinta Wesonga confirmed the incident. Seven people have been shot dead in the area in the last two months.
The police believe the culprits are behind six other murders and have appealed to members aware of the problem to volunteer information on those behind the worrisome and alarming killings.
Two weeks ago, the security Minister Joseph Ole Lenku in the company of the inspector general of police David kimaiyo toured the volatile Nandi-Luo and order and urged the two communities to maintain peace
The two top security officials assured tea and sugar cane farmers of the governments intention to improve security.
The first tea estate manager to die was was David Bivech of Chemartin Tea Estate who was attacked by the group armed with AK47 assault riffle in his house. Five other people who included Bivech’s wife, two administration police officers, a clerk and a night watchman were also injured in the attack on the manager’s house and were hospitalised for gun wounds which they sustained during the raid.
In the second raid incident William Nyongai an estate manager at Kapchoring Tea Estate received a gun shot wound and died while being treated at the nandi Hills Sub – District Hospital. Nyongai ‘s assailants escaped by cutting the barbed wire fence.
Three other deaths in the recent weeks were reported in the Muhoroni site of the border. They included 3 teachers, a retired teacher and a farmer. In the Nyanza incident, the three victims were shot to death by the assailants using poisoned arrows.
At the same time large scale sugar acne farmers in Kibos area near Kisumu and around Miwani, Chepsweka areas along the Nandi Escarpment have raised complaints about the want on destruction of their cane fields by herds men who are defiantly grazing herds of cattle in their farms thereby destroying young cane land.
Each time farmers who are members of the Indian community send watchmen to drive animals out of their farms, the herdsmen threatened them by shooting at them with arrows. The farmers have appealed to the government to bring the situation to an end and save their crops.
ENDS