Shock and grief engulfed Wangu village in Murang’a East sub county Thursday evening after a form two student committed suicide.
The teenage girl allegedly committed suicide hours after telling her grandmother that she was going to die that day.
The former student of Gakurwe secondary school in Murang’a county committed suicide by ingesting pesticides after she came home from school.
Speaking to the press, the girl’s father James Tumuti said that he was devastated when he got a call informing him of the incident.
“Everything was okay when I left home earlier last evening. I was in Kahuhia when I got the call, I immediately boarded a motorbike but by the time I got home it was too late,” he said.
The late Juliet Muthoni was living with her father and stepmother together with her siblings and grandmother after her biological mother separated from her father years back.
According to Tumuti, although his daughter and step mother tried to getting along, they would sometimes get into heated disagreements that would make Muthoni not to speak to the latter for days and even refusing to eat.
“I always made sure we addressed any emerging issues together as a family and I tried to remain close to my daughter although she would at times refuse to open up,” he said, adding that “my wife has actually told me that the late Muthoni had not talked to her for two days preceding her death.”
He also said that after his daughter’s death he was shocked to learn that she had confided to her grandmother that she would die that very day.
“Her grandmother told me that she had asked the deceased whether she would go to the river to fetch water but she had declined, while reiterating that she would die on the material day,” narrated the distraught father.
Tumuti also learnt that the late Muthoni had on other separate occasions spoken about her death to her sister and even cousins.
The suicidal student is then said to have stolen and stored the pesticides she finally used to terminate her life for a while before consuming them.
Tumuti said he had noticed that some of his pesticides were missing as he intended to use them during this rainy season and had even asked his wife about them.
Empty bottles of the killer pesticides were found under the deceased mattress when police officers arrived at the scene to move her body to Murang’a level 5 hospital mortuary for postmortem.
By Purity Mugo
