Man who killed wife as son watched convicted

The impact of domestic violence on the family unit was on display at the High Court in Nairobi on Tuesday.

This was after Kevin Oduor Barak was found guilty of the 2022 murder of his wife, Medrine Magova.

Justice Kanyi Kimondo, sitting in the Milimani Law Courts Criminal Division, heard that on July 4, 2022, in Githaturu, Korogocho, a domestic dispute escalated into the fatal assault. 

The case hinged significantly on the testimony of the couple’s nine-year-old son, who witnessed his parents fighting outside their home.

The boy told the court he saw his father strike his mother with a piece of wood embedded with a nail.

The mother, while under attack, urged her son to flee to his aunt’s house in Kariobangi for safety. 

It was only upon the boy's return later that evening that he discovered his mother’s body on a sofa.

Pathologist Dr Simon Omuok testified that while there was a wedge-shaped laceration on the victim's thigh, the actual cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. 

The postmortem report further detailed defensive bruises on her limbs.

Phylis Imali, the victim's sister, also testified of a history of volatility between the pair.

She recalled previous instances where the deceased had sought refuge at her home, once even appearing with a bloodstained shirt. 

Despite the defence’s attempt to portray the accused as a co-operative husband who stayed at the scene, the court found the nature of the injuries pointed towards a clear intent to cause grievous harm.

The minor’s account of a daylight brawl was corroborated by the accused's own contradictory defence.

While the defence argued it was unsafe to rely on the word of a minor, the judge noted the accused unwittingly confirmed the boy’s version of events.

In his sworn testimony on Tuesday, Barak admitted to a confrontation.

"She claimed I had another wife. She started throwing stones and sticks at me. There were people at the scene." 

This admission, the judge ruled, placed the accused at the centre of the violence, dismantling his later claim that he had simply returned home to find a tragedy he could not explain. 

The court rejected Barak's alibi—that he had been at work during the afternoon—as a convenient lie meant to distance himself from the immediate aftermath.

"He thus knew or ought to have known that it was likely to cause grievous harm or death," Justice Kimondo observed in his judgment.

"The entire corpus of direct, circumstantial and documentary evidence points irresistibly to his guilt."

Barak awaits sentencing, as the son remains in the care of his maternal aunt.