30 years for brute who led mob that killed cop

Monday afternoon of November 13, 2017, was a normal day for corporal Rodgers Nalianya.

Together with fellow officers from Bondo police station, he set out to arrest a suspect accused of burglary in Bondo town.

When the officers arrived at the scene where the suspect was reportedly hiding, events took a dramatic turn that would inevitably lead to the violent lynching of Nalianya later that evening.

According to court papers, some angry residents, having got wind that Nalianya and his colleagues were searching for the suspect, turned wild and chased away the officers.

The panicked officers quickly drove back to the Bondo police station under a hail of stones as the irate mob tried to make their way into the station.

Having escaped the wrath of the mob, Nalianya and fellow officers counted their luck and called it a day.

Sensing that things had calmed down at about 8 pm, Nalianya, against the advice of his colleagues, decided to go home to be with his family in Siaya town.

He calmly walked to a bus stage where he waited patiently until a private car drove by and requested a lift.

However, the angry mob was still lurking in the shadows and spotted him board the car.

The man leading the mobilisation of this irate crowd was Peter Abonyo.

After driving for a few kilometres, Nalianya and the driver stumbled on a makeshift roadblock at about 8.45 pm, with a seething mob of boda boda operators that demanded that he come out of the car.

With Abonyo still taking the lead, he incited the crowd that violently killed the police corporal. He will now serve 30 years for the crime after his appeal flopped.

He was convicted in January 2021.

The Court of Appeal judgment dated March 28 upheld the conviction.

After the incident, he fled to Kakamega but was later traced and apprehended.

During his appeal, Abonyo claimed he was not properly identified and linked to the offence and that his mitigation was not considered before sentencing.

But the three appellate judges heard none of that, finding that his conviction was watertight.

“Like the High Court judge, we, too, are satisfied that the identification parade was conducted in strict compliance with the laws and regulations and that the appellant’s complaint that he was handcuffed during the parade is a convenient afterthought,” they said.