Prisons beauty queen sentenced to death

BT CorrespondentJul 19, 20181 Mins read1.5k

Ruth Kamande, who was voted Miss Lang'ata Women Prison, found guilty of murdering her boy friend.

Ruth Wanjiku Kamande, the prisons beauty queen who stabbed her boyfriend many times in 2015 at Buruburu estate, Nairobi, has been sentenced to death by High Court judge Jessie Lesiit. The 24-year-old woman found guilty of killing her boyfriend, Farid Mohammed .

In her ruling today, Justice Jessie Lesiit said Ruth Wanjiku Kamande deliberately stabbed Farid Mohammed 25 times. “Young people should know it is not cool to kill your boyfriend,” Justice Lesiit further said, “it is better to walk away.”

Wanjiku murdered her boyfriend using a kitchen knife in September 2015. In mitigation last week, Ruth told the court she has reformed after staying in remanded two years and nine months. She added that she is remorseful. Wanjiku scored an A- in the 2017 KCSE examinations while in remand.

Her lawyer Joyner Okonjo said Wanjiku is now a devout Muslim and has been attending a course in theology for the past one year, adding that her client engaged in various activities at the Lang’ata Women Prison, which led to her being crowned Miss Lang’ata beauty in 2016.

The lawyer argued that for one to get such a title factors such as discipline, cooperation with the authorities and commitment to reform are considered.

Friends close to Farid said that they had been in an off and on relationship with her boyfriend who had moved on to another relationship before the fateful night.

In a past interview with Business Today, she said wanted to become an author share her true story to the world, which she couldn’t share to us since the case was still ongoing. She said she had cultivated a reading culture, frequenting the prison’s library in order to build her writing skills.

“I want to write my story someday. My first story will be my life in prison then the story of my whole life will follow,” Wanjiku told BT.