CCTV Of Last Moments Before Murder Of 3 Eastleigh Family Members As Suspect Arrested

New details regarding the abduction and subsequent murder of three family members who went missing from Eastleigh before their bodies were found have emerged, with CCTV footage revealing the last moments before the heinous act took place.

The footage is what police have a keen eye on and which was obtained from an apartment that the victims had rented within Eastleigh. Two of the victims, 25-year-old Amina Abdirashid and 12-year-old Nuseiba Dahir were seen getting into a lift in the midnight hours and heard mentioning the name of a suspect. 

Investigators believed that at this time, their abductors had contacted the girls through their 36-year-old mother Waris Daud's mobile phone asking them to come and pick her up. A motor vehicle arrived minutes later and picked them up before driving away.

Hours later, the vehicle was captured by surveillance cameras in Parklands dropping a body along the road within the estate. Immediately, it took a U-turn and left. A few hours later, locals stumbled on a mutilated human body which turned out to be that of Abdirashid.

Collage of the late Waris Daud (left) and her niece, Amina Abdirashid Dhahir. /THE STAR

Detectives near Wakulima Market in Kamukunji, Nairobi recovered a motor vehicle believed to have been used in the abduction. CCTV footage within the area captured how the car was abandoned in the area, with the driver leaving for an undisclosed location.

Arrest

Meanwhile, investigators piecing together the events leading to the killings arrested a suspect said to be an accomplice to the murder and who was said to have received some money from families of the victims as their abductors demanded ransom.

At some point, he was in communication with the main suspect at large. Additionally, the suspect was revealed to have used one of the victims' SIM card in his mobile phone. 

Autopsy

Meanwhile, autopsy results revealed that two of the three Eastleigh family members were brutally tortured while the other was suffocated before their bodies were dumped in different locations.

According to government pathologist Johansen Oduor, who led the autopsy exercise at Nairobi City Funeral Home, Daud and her niece Abdirashid faced severe torture that led to their death whereas Nuseiba was suffocated. 

The autopsy revealed that Daud suffered severe injuries to the neck vessels and the trachea and was badly bruised on the face. At the same time, she had her hands chopped off, with Oduor stating that they had taken samples for further analysis to ascertain if the hands truly belonged to her. 

“There are hands which have been found also in a separate scene and looked like hers. We primarily think they were hers. We’ve just taken samples for DNA just to be sure,” he said, adding that the 38-year-old woman also had the skin of her mutilated arms peeled off. 

For Amina, her life was cut short due to excessive bleeding from multiple stab wounds with one of the stabs getting “right into the heart.” Nuseiba Dahir, Oduor said, was suffocated to death with signs of having been raped before being smothered, evident.  

“Upon looking at the body, what I found was that she died because of smothering. Smothering is blocking the airway so that you cannot breathe. Then you die because of asphyxia,” he said. “And we thought that there was some evidence which looked like rape and we’ve taken samples for analysis."

Amina’s brother, Yusuf Abdirashid urged the government to move swiftly with investigations to bring the perpetrators to book. 

Previously, detectives at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters questioned a woman of Somali origin who provided crucial information about the abduction by claiming that she was abducted along with the three victims and was held in the same room where they were locked up after being abducted.

The abductors had reportedly demanded a ransom to release them, with her family managing to raise Ksh1 million, which was deposited into an Ethiopian bank account. Her statement could prove key to the investigations in connection to these mysterious killings with police trying to ascertain whether she was an accomplice or a victim.

With the real motive of the murder yet to be known, this gruesome murder of the three has sparked outrage among members of the public even as a section of leaders and human rights activists weigh in, expressing concerns over the surge in brutal killings across the country and appealing to Kenyans to share information that may help security and investigative agencies unravel the horrible killings. 

What is more shocking is statistics released on October 24 by Inspector General of Police, Douglas Kanja, showing that the National Police Service (NPS) recorded 339 murder cases from August to October 2024 compared to 336 cases in 2023 and 341 cases in 2022, numbers that send shivers given that most murders have occurred under the national radar.