Kenya Police: Robbing accident victims is immoral
Posted by African Press International on September 17, 2012
By MAURICE ALAL, reporting from Kisumu. Kenya
http://www.africanpress.me/ Maurice Alal.API reporter Kisumu.Kenya
When an accident occurs, you would expect that people rushing to the scene have one intention to save life. But it seems in Kisumu County of Nyanza Region people rushing to accident scenes have another intention.
The police in the region are now warning that cases of accident
victims being defraud are on the rise, and want the residents to
desist from the trend.
Top police boss, Musa Kongoli is concerned that cases of accidents victims falling into prey of the people who would have otherwise helped them are on the rise in Kisumu and its vicinity.
This, he says, must now stop. In one of the incidents, the police chief cites an incident in which a notorious pick pocket believed escaped death by a whisker and ended being locked up in a cold room together with dead bodies at Jaramogi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu City.
The man had failed in his attempt to steal a mobile phone from the dead. He had pretended he wanted to identify a relative whom he claimed was among those killed in the grisly road accident.
However, he was spotted by a mortuary attendant soon after he ransacked the pocket of one of the accident victims and fished out a mobile phone.
The mortuary attendant raised an alarm prompting an intervention from mourners who had come to collect their dead by beating him senseless before security guards manning the facility intervened.
Similar act of stealing was witnessed last months at the accident scene where 26 people lost their lives on spot at Mamboleo junction, Kisumu- Kakamega highway when a lorry packed with sugar from Mumias town (Western region) on transit to Kisumu rammed into two Nissan matatus.
A well-known female conductor who was in the Kakamega vehicle was robbed of all the day’s collection after one of the bold suspect courageously ransacked the pockets and fished out a huge wad of notes and disappeared into the dark night.
A section of Kisumu city and its environ the residents over the last three months have been seen rushing into the disaster scenes when a petroleum tankers veered off-road, fire out-break and recently the grisly accident off Kisumu-Kakamega road to loot fuels, goods and valuables of the accident victims.
These are what the police chief now wants to put a stop to. His message is one; if you rush to an accident scene, do so with the intent to save life and not to rob or steal from the victims.
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