The man who is alleged to have killed a 26-year-old woman on their first date on 23rd July has been arraigned in court to face murder charges.
Richard Nyakina Ogoka is accused of murdering Lydia Nyaboke by strangling her at Ngong Forest Mutuini Block in Dagoretti sub county.
However, Ogoka did not plead to the charges against him because he did not have a lawyer as required by the constitution.
Ms Nyaboke, who was staying with her younger brother in Ngara, Nairobi, is alleged to have gone to meet her boyfriend for the first time and had promised her brother to be back before the end of the day.
However, according to the younger brother Japheth Onono, by 6pm, she had not returned home which got him worried and prompted him to call her.
“When I called her, she told me she was in Ngong and may not come back home. I then asked her for money to buy dinner, which she promised to send in the next five minutes,” Onono recalled.
The money was never sent, prompting the brother to make another call but the phone was now off.
His fears were compounded by the fact that the sister, who worked as an M-Pesa attendant, had told him it was the first date.
This now prompted the brother who is a second year electric engineering student at the Technical University of Kenya to call his mother Irene Mogeni in Nyamira County and informed her that he could not trace Lydia.
The mother advised him to be patient, saying perhaps her phone’s battery had gone low.
“Just days before she disappeared, she used to talk for long hours on phone with someone. Out of curiosity, I asked her who it was, and she told me it was a new boyfriend. So on that Sunday, she was going to meet him for the first time, the brother said.
By Monday morning, Lydia had not been found.
On the third day, Onono went to Pangani Police Station to report that his sister was missing and was advised to report in Ngong where her sister communicated from last.
However last Friday, officers from the Special Crimes Prevention Unit called him and told him that they had arrested a suspect who had owned up to murdering his sister and dumping the body in Ngong forest, near Lenana School.
