Jan, 26th 2021 – University student Lawrence Warunge, who is accused of killing his family in Kiambu, has been declared unfit to stand trial. The ruling was made by Chief Magistrate Patricia Gichohi of the Kiambu court, following a mental assessment, conducted on Warunge.
Gichohi also freed Warunge’s girlfriend Sarah Muthomi, who will now become a state witness in the case.
Following the psychiatric report, the DPP requested the suspect to be detained for one month, with a further medical check-up done on him. Warunge will be in police custody until the 1st, of March this year, when the matter will be mentioned.
Warunge is accused of killing his four family members and a farmworker in Kiambaa on the 5th of January. The postmortem by Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor revealed that all five victims died from multiple stab wounds highly likely inflicted by the same person.
Planned murders
According to a statement to the police, Warunge confessed to planning the murders adding that he drew his inspiration from the TV series “Killing Eve”. He also added that the murder weapon, the knife, was purchased by his girlfriend.
Warunge revealed that he had planned to kill everyone including his two sisters who survived due to the reopening of schools on the 5th of January.
In a confession, he claimed he killed the family members because they were talking ill of him behind his back. He confessed to killing his father Nicholas Njenga Warunge, his mother Annie, brothers Maxwell and Christian and their farm hand James Kinyanjui.