Detectives are investigating an incident in which a 21-year-old medical student from Kenyatta University was found dead at Qwetu Hostels in Ruaraka, Nairobi on Thursday.
Swala Nyeti has established that security guards at Qwetu Ruaraka opted to open 21-year-old Neema Githae’s room at Thursday 5pm on realizing she had not left her room in three days.
Swala Nyeti also established that door logs captured that she entered her room on Monday September 27 at 4pm before her lifeless body was found on September 30 afternoon.
The guards and management officials used their master key card to open the electronically controlled door to access the room only to find the female student slumped on the ground.
It is then that they called the Qwetu Ruaraka available registered resident nurse, who confirmed she was dead and they proceeded to call in the police to handle the matter.
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Police officers and detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) arrived minutes later and secured the scene before later moving the body to City Mortuary.
Ruaraka OCS and Qwetu Hostels Ruaraka management called the next of kin, her mother Linda Macharia, and broke the sad news and also gave her a note the deceased left behind.
Linda was called in by the OCS and she reported at the Ruaraka Police Station, where she was informed of the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death.
But on Friday, Neema’s mother held a press conference alleging that Qwetu Hostels and the police were involved in a cover up but admitted to receiving a note left behind by Neema.
She also revealed that there had been underlying issues and bitter arguments between her and her deceased daughter and they had even sought the intervention of a counsellor.
Linda further denied being called by Qwetu management over Neema’s death, but Swala Nyeti has established that calls logs at the facility captured a call made to her on Thursday.
Police say they opted to move the body to City Mortuary as required by their procedures to keep custody of the body until a post mortem is conducted to establish the cause of death.
The post mortem was done on Saturday but her mother did not send an independent pathologist as requested with the results of the autopsy expected to be released this week.
Investigations by DCI detectives are currently ongoing after they obtained the CCTV footage availed to them by Qwetu homes, which Linda had also demanded in her media briefing.
Due to rising mental health cases, Qwetu has undertaken to invest in more mental awareness activities to aid young students at their hostels to better cope with life pressures.
The incident comes amid rising concerns over rising mental health cases in Kenya’s institutions of higher learning resulting in an alarming rise in cases of suicide.
University students in Kenya have emerged to be vulnerable to suicide, with a 2014 study published by the Journal of Affective Disorders finding depression prevalence to be 35 per cent among university students.
Among the suicide victims in universities, 33.5 per cent are by males and 39 per cent females, with education stakeholders seeking ways to tackle rising university suicides.
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