I knew she would return, mum of slain varsity student speaks

“I knew she would be back but now she won’t return home”, a tearful Trizza Kwamboka uttered amid sobs as she recounted her last moments with her daughter Sylvia Kemunto.

Sylvia went missing on Sunday, March 30 before her body was found in a hostel rooftop water tank at Multimedia University on April 2.

“She was a very disciplined girl. I have struggled raising her and her twin siblings as a single mother,” her mother said.

Kwamboka sells groceries in Kawangware’s Amboseli area.

When the Star visited her at the single-room house on Monday, she was with her two sisters and only brother and neighbours.

“Grande (as they call Sylvia) left here for campus on Friday. They were sitting for some exam after which she was to pack her belongings and return home the following week,” Kwamboka said.

For the last three weeks, Sylvia has been commuting from Kawangware to Multimedia University to attend classes because she feared for her life.

Her mother said she had reported threats from a fellow student who had seduced her but whose advances she had rejected.

On that fateful Sunday, Sylvia was in her hostel room on the third floor when the alleged suitor Eric Mutinda crept in. Her roommate had left for church and so only the two first-year students were in the room.

Kwamboka said her daughter had left home for college without pocket money. But when she went for their usual choir practices that Sunday at the Lavington SDA, a church elder agreed to send some cash to Sylvia.

“He sent Sh1,500 to her phone and I immediately called to tell her not to send back the cash. Sylvia was so disciplined that if someone sent her cash from a wrong number, she would send it back,” her mother said.

That was around midday on Sunday and it was the last time the two spoke on phone. When she called again after 2 pm, Sylvia’s phone went unanswered.

“I thought maybe she had put the phone somewhere because she had told me she wanted to wash her clothes. So I said I would call again,” Kwamboka said.

The next call was made at about 5 pm. Again, she did not pick the call. Kwamboka felt something was amiss.

Sylvia had never failed to pick up her phone on two consecutive occasions. She called again and again until she decided to look for other contacts at the university.

First, she called the guard at the gate. He went to Sylvia’s room but did not find her.

“Sylvia’s roommate told me that she had left her in the room but did not find her when she returned from church,” Kwamboka said.

On Monday, Kwamboka went to the university in search of her daughter. That search took her to Lang’ata police station where she made a missing person’s report.

When she returned to her house in Kawangware that Monday evening, a disturbed Kwamboka could not sleep. At about 1 am, she called Sylvia’s line but no one picked up.

“I called the police to alert them that the number was on. But when they called, it was switched off.”

On Tuesday, Kwamboka woke up very early and left for Multimedia University hoping to get credible information about her daughter’s whereabouts.

She could not go on Monday because it was a public holiday and the institution’s managers could not be found.

“I also wanted to just sit by the gate until they gave me my daughter,” Kwamboka said, tears freely flowing down her cheeks.

In the end, she received a call while in her house that a body of a woman had been found in a water tank. She was asked to go and see if it was Sylvia.

“My world was shattered. I couldn’t believe it. I had all along been hoping that my daughter would be found alive,” Kwamboka said as her sisters comforted her.

Investigations by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions has so far established that Mutinda had tried to touch Sylvia when they were in her hostel room provoking a confrontation.

Sylvia hit her head on the wall during that confrontation and collapsed.

Mutinda has since confessed to police that he realised she had died a few minutes later.

He then put Sylvia’s body in a suitcase and took it to his room.

At dawn the following day on Monday, he left the room with the suitcase and dumped the body in the rooftop water tank and vanished.

He would later surrender to police in his home county of Makeuni on Thursday April 4.

Mutinda was presented before Kibera principal magistrate Zainab Abdul on Monday, where the state asked to detain him for 21 days pending completion of investigations.