Police in Mathira Constituency in Nyeri County doubt that a man who allegedly killed his wife and escaped is still alive after his phone signal went silent.

The suspect, Stephen Muriithi went on the run after allegedly stabbing his wife Lydia Nyaguthii to death at their home on Friday, May 20.

Efforts to trace him have proved futile as the police now say that his phone signal which was last traced to Kagumo, Kirinyaga County, went silent on the evening of Monday, May 23 which sent the police back to the drawing board as they had been relying on the signal to keep track of his whereabouts.

Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations took over the case, who then opined that it was unlikely that the suspect was still alive, especially because of the gruesome manner in which the first-time offender committed the act.

“We are still looking for him but since Monday we have not made much progress. My officers are still on the ground but we doubt whether he can commit such a crime and still be found alive,” Mathira West sub-county Police Commander Michael Ndegwa stated on Wednesday, May 25.

“This is a person who had not committed such a crime before and if he happened to have thrown himself into a river it would not be easy to find him immediately. But we are still searching, although we can’t even trace his phone signal,” he added. 

Relatives and neighbors are still coming to terms with the death of Nyaguthii who was a senior nurse at the Tumutumu PCEA Hospital, as they were the first responders of the distress call and found the deceased lying in a pool of blood outside their matrimonial home.

While awaiting post-mortem results, relatives revealed that she had about 12 visible knife wounds on her body.

The case has proved mysterious as the suspect was initially a patient of the deceased before they wed, as she cared for him when he was indisposed as a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his first wife over 20 years ago, only for her to suffer in the hands of a victim of the same vice.