[HOLD] How Taita Taveta man staged daring robbery at gemstones mining site
On August 4, 2015, Johnson Githii Karanja, a mine owner in Mwatate, Taita Taveta County, received a call from his camp manager, Cyrus Muriuki, informing him that armed robbers had attacked them.
A gang entered the camp at around 1 am, fired twice in the air using AK47 rifles and ordered everyone to lie down. The criminals then broke the doors and padlocks of stores and stole sacks of unrefined gemstones as some of the workers fled.
Muriuki was among those who fled to safety so he called his boss.
Karanja then called the police to report the robbery and officers proceeded to the camp where they collected spent cartridges, but the robbers had already left and there were no leads to pursue.
Workers at the mine who had fled the scene said they saw the robbers drive out in a pick-up truck. It was when they returned to the camp that they discovered the vandalism and theft.
At about 6 am, Wilson Mwatati, a teacher at Murugi Primary School in Taita Taveta, reported to Mwatate Police Station in the company of his driver Joseph Katula and turnboy Jonathan Mbindyo.
He told the police they had hired a pick-up truck to carry sand from a mine in Kabanga village but were hijacked and driven into a mining camp by a gang that forced them to load sacks onto the vehicle.
The pickup's owner, businessman Daniel Muthoka Nthusi, had earlier reported at the same police station that his truck was missing after Mwatati, Katula and Mbindyo failed to return it. He also told the police that the three were unavailable on the phone.
Mwatati told the police that he met a miner who knew of a site in Kabanga village where they could buy sand he needed for construction.
He hired Nthusi's truck the previous evening. picked up the miner named Maghanga Mwajewe Mwazo and his worker and proceeded to the site, with his driver and turnboy.
Along the way, however, Mwazo and his worker requested the driver to stop. They disappeared into a nearby bush and resurfaced a few minutes later with a gang of about six men, two of them armed with AK47 rifles, and ordered Mwatati, Katula and Mbindyo to surrender their phones. This was at around 6 pm.
Katula was ordered to follow a motorcycle rider who led them to the mine where were forced to work as loaders during the robbery.
After the robbery, they drove out of the mine belonging to Karanja, led by the same motorcycle rider. Along the way, they were led into a bush where they were ordered to offload the sacks.
After that, they were given their phones and ordered to drive away led by the rider. It was then that Mwatati called Nthusi informing him of what had happened and requesting money to fuel the vehicle so they could return.
Nthusi told him to meet him at Mwatate Police Station. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) took over investigations and interviewed Karanja, Nthusi and Mwatati.
Karanja told the detectives that he knew Mwazo as he was once his employee at the mine while Mwatati said he knew him as a miner who could help him get sand from the mines where he had worked.
Lengthy trial
DCI investigators identified Mwazo as a suspect and tracked and arrested him at a hotel where they found him with a woman. They recovered Sh29,000 and some gemstones.
After the problem, Mwazo and his accomplice were jointly charged with two counts of robbery with violence, contrary to section 296 (2) of the Penal Code.
In the cases, they were accused of robbing Muriuki of tourmaline gemstones of an unknown value and Katula of a pick-up truck, registration KBY 302T with a value of Sh965,000. in Kabanga village, Taita Taveta, on August 4, 2015.
After a lengthy trial in which the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) called 14 witnesses, Mwazo was convicted of robbery and sentenced to hang while his accomplice was acquitted and discharged.
The witnesses included Karanja, Muriuki, Mwatati, Katula, Mbindyo and Nthusi, and the police officers involved in the investigation.
Mwazo appealed against both the conviction and sentence before Justice Jacque Kamau of the Voi High Court but lost on December 5, 2017.
The convict challenged the ruling at the Court of Appeal in Mombasa, asking judges Milton Makhandia, Agnes Murgo and George Ondunga to find his conviction unsafe and the death sentence "harsh, excessive and unconstitutional".
The convict argued that the prosecution did not prove the offence of robbery since the owner of the goods stolen in the robbery was not identified according to the Mining Act of 2016.
In their ruling on February 9, 2024, the judges dismissed this claim and said evidence in the record identified Karanja as the owner of the stolen goods and that Mwazo did not raise this before the trial court and the High Court where he made his first appeal.
"According to the evidence, PW1 (Karanja) is a miner at Mwatate and the owner of the mine that was robbed. At no point during the hearing did the appellant (Mwazo) challenge Karanja's ownership of the mine or the minerals," the judges stated in the ruling that Justice George Odunga declined to sign.
They said there was also evidence showing Mwazo worked for Karanja and knew him as the owner of the mine and the minerals, therefore the ownership of the minerals was sufficiently established.
"Based on the concurrent findings of both the trial court and the High Court, we are satisfied that the appellant (Mwazo) was part of the gang that robbed PW1 (Karanja) of the unrefined minerals, and that the ingredients for the offence of robbery with violence were proved to the required standard, which rendered the conviction safe. We have no reason to interfere with the conviction," the judges ruled.
"In sum, the appeal against conviction and sentence lacks merit and is dismissed in its entirety."
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