LGBTQ Activist Edwin Chiloba Murdered, Body Stuffed In Metallic Box

LGBTQ activist and model Edwin Chiloba was on Thursday, January 5 found murdered.

Police had positively identified Chiloba after discovering his lifeless body stuffed in a metallic box along the Kipenyo-Katinga Road in Uasin Gishu County.

Bodaboda riders recounted seeing a vehicle with a concealed registration number dump the box along the road, a matter which prompted them to alert the police.

When police opened the box, they found Chiloba's decomposing body dressed in a woman's clothes.

Image of slain LGBTQ activist Edwin Chiloba. /TWITTER 

He was taken to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital whereby post-mortem will seek to establish the cause of death.

Chiloba, famous within the streets of Eldoret town, often dressed in women’s clothes and shared his photos on his official social media accounts.

His body was found wearing clothes he had on December 31, 2022 as evidenced in a video clip that captured him dancing and merry making with his friends to Sauti Sol's song Live and Die in Afrika.

Chiloba had in July 2022 posted horrific photos on his Instagram, which he later pulled down, after he was attacked and assaulted because of his identity and his work in gender-fluid fashion and content.

Four months ago, people against his LGBTQ lifestyle pounced on him and beat him up, leaving him with injuries including a large cut on his lips and blood trickling down from the upper part of his face. His clothes were also torn and dirty, and there were scrapes and bruises all over his face.

“So, my movement is for everyone. It’s about inclusion. And if I am going to fight what I have been marginalised for, I am going to fight for all marginalised people," his Instagram post on December 16, 2022 read.

The last Instagram post that he shared on December 29, 2022, indicated that Chiloba had hoped to achieve multiple goals in 2023, among them growing his fashion brand and working with major companies.

He has never shied away from dressing like a woman and sharing his images across his social media accounts.

An Instagram user by the name Biubwa-uncut narrated how they reached out to him trying to inquire what had transpired and he responded by saying that he would talk when he is ready.

“Barely four months later, they have brutally murdered you in the most uncouth of ways and my heart is shattered. I know you fought.

“Words cannot explain the pain in my heart. We will try to fight for your justice, best way we have access to we will try. It’s not okay that when we die, we have to think to fight because we don’t just die. We are murdered,” the Instagram post read in part.

On April 24, 2022, Sheila Lumumba, a 25-year-old who identified as a member of the LGBTQ community and used the pronouns They, Them, Theirs, was found dead and naked in a pool of blood in her house in Karatina, sparking a nationwide outrage over the general safety of the queer community in the country.

The late Sheila Lumumba. /FILE