KENYA – Police have arrested a woman who stole two children transported them to her rural home from where one of them was killed, has been slapped with a four-year jail term.
The woman, Scolastica Itula Kilonzo, 61, was handed the penalty by a senior resident magistrate Charles Mwaniki upon conviction for two counts of child stealing.
She was found guilty of stealing the two children aged six and nine after luring them out of their mother’s house in Kibera with the promise of buying them shoes.
She was accused of fraudulently taking and detaining the two children on diverse dates between April 2011 and December 2013 with the intent to deprive the parent who had the lawful responsibility of possession of the children.
Reports indicate that Ms Kilonzo had employed the children’s mother as house help in Kibera in June 2011 where she worked for two months before relocating to her rural home in Kalawa where her employee took the children with her.
The kids were then enrolled at Kalawa primary school but the employer and employee were involved in a pay dispute.
The employee eventually managed to leave her workplace with her children and went to live with her father in Kibera from where Ms Kilonzo is said to have lured the two children.
Ms Kasalu returned home one day in December of that year to find the children missing.
She went to Ms Kilonzo’s home in Kalawa and found them there but she was denied access to them despite making several attempts to leave with them.
She returned to Nairobi and reported the matter to Langata children’s office. She had learnt that the children were enrolled in a different school under different names.
