Police shoot one criminal dead, seriously wound another in Thika Town

Police have shot a member of a criminal gang dead and wounded another one who accosted two University Students in Thika Town on Wednesday night.

The criminals were part of a notorious gang that has been terrorising residents of the town, robbing pedestrians of their belongings.

According to the police report, the two students were robbed when they went about the local grocery shop to buy some avocado at around 9 pm along the Kiang’ombe-Railway Road.

The criminals who toted a firearm and wielded other crude weapons accosted the two Mount Kenya University, Thika Campus students and ordered them to surrender everything they had.

The students complied with the criminals’ demands and handed their mobile phones, clothes, shoes and belts to the criminals.

The criminals further asked badly shaken students to disclose their MPESA PIN number and that was an order that one of the students would find so hard to comply with perhaps because of the imminent loss he had.

The student, in despair, shrilled an alarm that caught the attention of police officers who were nearby on their normal patrol duty.

The officers responded promptly, and that is when a fierce gun battle ensued between the police and the criminals.

By the time the sound of gunshots subsided, one thug was dead while the other one was seriously injured before hopping onto a getaway motorbike and escaping with serious gunshot wounds.

Police recovered a firearm, two rounds of ammunition and a machete from the criminal they felled.

The police have also launched a manhunt for other members of the criminal gang and are hoping to bring them to book soon.