Nyangasi to 'hang' today

By Robert Mwesigye

The embattled former chairman of the Uganda Health and Allied Workers Union Apollo Nyangasi will know the price of killing his wife, Christine Dambio, today.

Nyangasi is set to be sentenced after he was last Friday convicted for his wife’s murder more than two years ago when, in a fit of anger; he squeezed the life out of her owing to property wrangles.

Justice Jane Kiggundu  ruled that: “The accused is not an ordinary person. He is a medical practitioner, he should have known the consequences of squeezing a person’s neck.” 

The court relied on evidence of the key witness, Fiona Aguram, who witnessed Nyangasi strangling his wife on July 29, 2010, after the couple had had a quarrel.

By then, the two lived apart. Nyangasi lived in their house in Kireka, a Kampala suburb, while Dambio resided in a rented room about 30 feet away.

That morning, Nyangasi walked to his wife’s apartment and confronted her. He then grabbed her and started strangling her. It was only after the intervention of neighbours that he took his hands off Dambio.

Nyangasi then walked back to his house, leaving Dambio on the ground. Neighbours rushed her to a clinic in Bugolobi, a Kampala suburb, but on realising the gravity of the situation, the clinic referred Dambio to Mulago hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.