Kenyan police have launched a massive manhunt after Collins Jumaisi, a 33-year-old man accused of murdering and dismembering 42 women, escaped from custody in Nairobi on Tuesday.
The police described Jumaisi as a “vampire, a psychopath” following his arrest last month when mutilated bodies were discovered in a garbage dump in a Nairobi slum.
According to police, Jumaisi was one of 13 detainees who managed to break out of the Gigiri police station in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The suspects, which include 12 individuals of Eritrean origin detained for being illegally present in the country, reportedly cut through the wire mesh in the station’s basking bay, an area designated for detainees to get fresh air.
“Investigations have been launched, and a major security operation is underway to get the 13 suspects,” Kenya police spokeswoman Resila Onyango told AFP.
The escape occurred when officers arrived at the station around 5 a.m. to serve breakfast to the prisoners. “On opening the cell door, they discovered that 13 prisoners had escaped,” the police stated.
Jumaisi had appeared in court just days before the escape, where a magistrate ordered that he be held for an additional 30 days to allow police to complete their investigations.
His capture last month shocked the nation, especially after the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) revealed that ten butchered female bodies, trussed up in plastic bags, had been found in a dumpsite in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum.
The gruesome discovery comes on the heels of another horrifying incident, the so-called Shakahola forest massacre, where over 400 bodies were found in mass graves near Kenya’s coast.
The massacre is linked to a cult leader accused of encouraging his followers to starve themselves to death in preparation for the end of the world.
Head of Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Mohamed Amin, has described Jumaisi as “a vampire, a psychopath,” noting that he confessed to murdering 42 women over two years, beginning with his wife in 2022.
Jumaisi was arrested on July 15 near a Nairobi bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football final.
The escape has raised serious concerns about the security and effectiveness of Kenya’s police force.
The dumped bodies in Mukuru were discovered just 100 meters from a police station, prompting investigations by the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) into possible police involvement or negligence.
The state-funded KNCHR is also conducting its investigation into the Mukuru killings, underscoring the need to “rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings.”
Kenyan police have long been accused by human rights groups of engaging in unlawful killings and operating hit squads, yet few officers have been held accountable.
