A family is once again grieving the loss of a loved one following the tragic events of June 25 during protests against the now withdrawn Finance Bill, 2024. Denzel Onyango, aged 23, was described by his family as a quiet yet ambitious young man who avoided conflicts.
They last saw him in a self-recorded video during the storming of Parliament on that day.
His brother, Joshua Juma, recalled speaking with Denzel a day before the protests. Juma mentioned that Denzel, a quantity surveying student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, did not give any indication that he planned to participate in the ‘Occupy Parliament’ demonstrations.
“It was just a call like any other, between an older and a younger brother,” he said, adding that his phone later went off during the day of the protests.
Some family members in Nairobi swung into action and started searching for him.
They moved from one police station to another, hospitals and morgues with no success.
“My uncle went to Juja police station and reported him missing. Like it happened to everyone during these protests, the search was in morgues and hospitals and no police station gave indication that he had been arrested,” Juma said.
Over the weekend, his family saw a picture circulating on social media showing his body alongside his identity documents at a quarry in Juja.
“We were shocked because I had shared the poster looking for his whereabouts. We were not prepared to get the feedback from social media that he had died. The family is still deeply traumatised,” the brother said.
The family is still struggling to come to terms with the news and are preparing for the postmortem on the body before burial preparations.
“As you can expect, a body recovered from water is swollen and you cannot tell if there are any signs of torture or strangulation,” he said when asked on possible marks on the body that could give indication on how the young man met his death.
Speculation is rife the student could have been killed elsewhere and his body dumped at the quarry.
