The police arrested Zipporah Mutheu, a small-scale businesswoman in Kambu, Makueni County, due to a Ksh 465 debt, and placed her in custody along with her sick, medication-dependent one-and-a-half-year-old child.
On a hot Wednesday afternoon, Mutheu was in her shop when a police officer, responding to a debtor’s call, showed up and arrested her.
The officers allegedly beat both Mutheu and her child during the arrest before throwing them into a cell at Kambu Sub-County Police Station.
Mutheu’s child was already ill and needed further treatment. That night, she begged the officers to let her take her child to the hospital.
Her pleas were ignored.
Early Thursday morning, the child’s condition worsened, and the baby started vomiting.
Mutheu tried kicking the cell door repeatedly to get attention, but no one responded until it was too late—her child died in her arms.
The officers allegedly refused to record the incident and instructed Mutheu to carry her dead child to the mortuary herself.
It took the intervention of an OCS from Mtito-Andei Station to get an OB number recorded.