A 33-year-old man is being held by detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations after they discovered him with stab wounds in an apartment room in Nairobi’s Thome estate, where a 20-year-old woman had been before she passed away on Saturday.
Joan Mbula Nzomo, 20, was discovered dead on the ground floor of the apartment complex where she had spent the night before.
When she fell from the apartment’s tenth floor, she was only partially clothed.
The deceased wore a red t-shirt at the time of the discovery of the body.
It’s not clear if she was pushed, fell while trying to escape from something, or died by suicide, police said.
When police arrived at the scene hours after the tragic incident, they found the short-stay accommodation room she spent the previous night locked.
The team contacted the owner of the room who arrived with a spare key and enabled them to access it.
Inside the room, they found an unconscious man who has since been identified as Lawrence Gitonga lying unconscious on the floor with eight stab wounds.
He had bled profusely, which prompted the team of detectives to rush him to hospital but under watch.
When he regained consciousness, he told police that the deceased lady had stabbed him.
The room looked disturbed which indicated there had been a struggle therein, police said.
Neighbours told police they heard the woman shouting for help on the balcony of the house before she fell.
DCI detectives spent the better part of Saturday morning combing through evidence and interviewing residents and management of the apartment.
Police said there were blood-stained bed sheets and blood splattered on the bathroom walls and floor.
They suspect the man may have sought refuge in the bathroom after he was stabbed.
Detectives are keen to get answers on what transpired leading to the death of the woman.
“The deceased, according to our source, had no wounds. A postmortem has, however, been scheduled to establish how she died,” detectives said.
Investigating officers collected forensic evidence and personal belongings and secured CCTV footage which they will examine to help in their investigations.
Police said preliminary investigations established that the woman met the man in one of the entertainment joints along Mirema Drive in Roysambu Friday night.
Hours later, they were seen dropping off one of their friends before heading to the apartments and later to a bar close to the apartments where they continued drinking inside a car.
Around 3 am Saturday, the two checked into the short-stay apartment they had booked on the 10th floor.
Nairobi police boss Adamson Bungei said they are waiting for Gitonga to stabilise so he can tell his side of the story as part of the probe into the lady’s death.
“For now he is the main suspect in this incident as we investigate it,” he said.
The incident adds to several other deaths of young women who died inside short-stay accommodation rooms popularly known as Airbnb.
They include socialite Starlet Wahu who was found dead in a room in South B and university student Rita Waeni Muendo who met her death in a similar fashion in Roysambu.
The cases are at various stages of investigation.
