A bodyguard of Laikipia Governor Joshua Irungu has tragically ended his own life after shooting himself through the mouth yesterday inside the house he had rented in Nanyuki Town.
The police declined to release the officer’s name or provide more details about his position, other than to say that he had been standing as the governor’s shadow for nearly two and a half years, since September 2022, before turning his firearm on himself on Wednesday afternoon.
At around 3 PM on the tragic day, the bodyguard is said to have hopped onto a boda boda in Nanyuki Town, asking the rider to take him home—just three kilometres away in Blue Gum Estate. Before disembarking, he requested the rider to wait so they could return to town together. But in the quiet of the afternoon, the waiting rider heard a loud gunshot from the house. Alarmed, he rushed to the nearest police station to report what had just happened.
The police hurried to the estate to investigate, only to find that the bodyguard had taken his own life. The bullet, like a final whisper of despair, entered through his mouth and exited through the back of his head, marking a sorrowful end to his service.
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“It is true the governor’s bodyguard has died after shooting himself through the mouth. He did not leave a suicide note, and the body has been taken to the Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital mortuary,” Laikipia East police boss John Tarus said, confirming the incident.
The officer’s final duty post had been just a few days earlier, last Monday, when he was part of the security detail as President William Ruto’s advisor on women’s rights and gender, Harriet Chigai, and officials from Habitat for Humanity Kenya visited the governor.
His workmates at the governor’s office said they were with him that evening at a hotel, where he looked jovial and displayed no signs of disturbance.
After his passing, he is survived by his widow and a three-month-old baby back at his rural home in Nyanza.
In Kenya, more police officers commit suicide every year than are killed in the line of duty; since the 2010s, an average of sixty officers have died each year by suicide.
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