A notorious child killer in Kenya was lynched by a mob on Friday, days after he escaped from prison.
The self-confessed killer had gone on a spree of bloodshed, maiming little children and ending their lives abruptly.
Masten Milimo Wanjala was arrested four months ago over the disappearance of two children. He thereafter admitted to killing more than 10 children in a period of five years, sometimes painting a gory picture that equates him with a vampire. He said he “sucked blood out of their veins before executing them,” according to a statement by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
Wanjala, 20, was due for a court hearing on Wednesday but was nowhere to be found, as he’d broken jail.
On Friday, a mob put the law in their own hands when a group of school pupils informed some individuals they’d seen him in his rural home in Bungoma, several kilometres away from the prison he’d escaped from.
“He comes from this area and so the children saw him and knew it was him and that is when information spread around and locals started pursuing him,” area administrator Bonface Ndiema told journalists.
“In the end he ran into a neighbour’s house but he was flushed out and lynched.”
Kenya had been replete with stories of child disappearance and Wanjala’s arrest proved to be a key factor in reducing that.
Locals had thronged the streets of capital city, Nairobi and other cities in protest of the disappearance of young teenage children. They’d burnt the house of a wrong suspect in one of their revolts.
“Unbeknownst to some of the worried families, their children were long executed by the beast and their remains dumped in thickets. Others were submerged in sewer lines in the city and left to rot away,” the DCI revealed in July.
The bodies of the kids killed Wanjala are yet to be recovered.
According to the AFP, while there are doubts over the full identity of the lynched man, early investigations point to Wanjala.
“The locals have said it is him… For now we can confirm that a man locals say is Masten Wanjala who was on the run has been lynched in Bungoma,” the Police Spokesperson said.