Authorities in Kenya said a policeman who went on a rampage in a neighborhood in the capital city of Nairobi on Tuesday fatally shot six people before turning the gun on himself, Reuters reported.
In a Twitter post, the country’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said the deceased officer fatally shot his wife at their residence before leaving to kill four more people. The officer, who the department labeled as a “cop gone rogue”, used his service-issued AK-47 rifle during the fatal rampage.
A senior police officer, Francis Wahome, said two other people sustained injuries in the incident. And though the motive behind the killings is yet to be established, Wahome told AFP the officer and his wife “had issues and were quarreling before.”
“The investigations are a secret. We cannot divulge, as it involves many things,” Wahome also said, per Reuters. “Until now, we never had any concerns about the officer’s behavior. He had been going for duty properly, and had never been involved in an incident like this.”
Among the people who lost their lives in the incident were three men who had just attended a funeral preparations meeting for a loved one, the DCI said. A resident in the neighborhood told Reuters that prior to the shootings, a car supposedly belonging to the police passed by them before stopping for around 20 minutes.
“Then he got out, and we saw it was Mr. Ben [the officer who opened fire]. He came out with an AK-47, cocked it and started firing at us where we were with the boda boda (motorcycle) riders,” the resident recalled. “They said the shooter wasn’t speaking; he was just shooting, and we know it is a police officer.”
Following the incident, furious residents reportedly burned car tires on a road to protest the killings.
