Two robbery suspects are dead after a police-involved shooting in Homa Bay County.
In today’s incident that happened in the afternoon hours, the unidentified robbers were shot and killed in the Got Kokech area along the Homa Bay-Kendu Bay road a few kilometres from Homa Bay town.
The robbers were just from a reported heist within the county when they got flagged down by officers who were on patrol in the area. They failed to yield.
Instead, they engaged the police officers in a running fire-fight while speeding on the highway until their car lost control and landed in a ditch.
One of the robbers was killed at that point as he turned and pulled out a gun to fire at the police as he was fleeing on foot.
According to eyewitnesses, the other one was chased until the nearby River Osiri, where he tried to hide, but a sharpshooter took him down with a round to his head.
“The suspect covered his head with clothes and squatted in the river to avoid being seen. One of the policemen saw him and shot him,” Joseph Awino, a resident, said.
Mr Owino told journalists that the gun battle raged for the better part of that hour, and bullets could be seen slamming into police cruisers.
Police said a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, used by one of the gunmen, and other stolen items, including a flat-screen TV, chequebooks and other bank documents, were found at the scene.
Detectives and crime scene investigators from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Homa Bay office searched the area of the shooting for bullets, shell casings or other ballistics evidence to help with investigations.
“Their fingerprints (robbers’) will be taken on Tuesday to help in identification. We are still proceeding with investigations,” DCI Homa Bay office commander Charles Koilege said.
Bodies of the deceased were taken to Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital mortuary.
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