CSI: Search for banker's killers continues

By Charles Etukuri

The visitation day of his children was on November 23, 2013, but owing to his busy schedule, 51-year-old David Kiwanuka decided to delegate this responsibility to the house help.

“He called me over to his house and told me to go and visit his children in the nearby boarding school. He asked me to tell them to read very hard,” says Florence Nansubuga, 20, a student at Yeffe High School.

Nansubuga worked at Kiwanuka’s residence as a parttime house help on weekends and during holidays. After packing foodstuffs for the children, Nansubuga left her boss’ residence in Kiwanga-Lwanda village in Goma division, Mukono district. That was the last time she saw him alive.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Shortly after Nansubuga had left, Kiwanuka also left his residence. Nobody knows what transpired thereafter, or where he went.

On the evening of November 23, he returned on a boda boda. After paying the rider, he opened the gate and locked himself in his house.

According to Nansubuga, the deceased was staying alone in his home, which had a high perimeter wall fence. It was difficult for anybody to tell what was happening inside the wall fence. Nansubuga says when she returned from the visitation, she tried knocking on the gate to give him a report, but there was no response.

“I even tried calling him, but his phones were switched off. I waited a long time for him, but he did not come, so I decided to leave,” she says.

WHERE IS HE?

Monday being a working day, Kiwanuka was supposed to leave his home early in the morning and head to Bank of Baroda, where he was employed. But he did not. He never opened his gate. Neighbours thought he had left for work earlier than usual. Back at his work place, Kiwanuka was no where to be seen.

“He would report to work by 8:00am and work till 5:30pm. Thereafter, he would head straight home,” says a colleague. Kiwanuka’s colleagues hoped that he would report to work the following day.

BODY FOUND

According to the Mukono Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Department boss, Henry Mugumya, nearly a week after Kiwanuka went missing, one of his neighbours, who has a garden close to his (Kiwanuka’s) residence, discovered documents bearing Kiwanuka’s name and clothes later identified as belonging to the deceased.

The items were strewn across the garden. She became suspicious and alerted the area authorities. There was also a foul smell coming from the direction of Kiwanuka’s house.

According to the area youth councillor, Richard Kasiriivu, when residents peered through an opening at the gate, they could see a body lying on the veranda. The Police (Mukono Central Police Station) was immediately alerted.

“On breaking the locks, we discovered Kiwanuka’s body lying on the veranda. The door to his house was also found open and some drawers in the house had been ransacked. Certain items had also been stolen from the house,” Kasiriivu says.

According to Police sources, the assailants could have climbed over the deceased’s fence and then waited for him inside. “They could have scaled the wall that evening or very early in the morning as he was preparing to go to work,” a Police source says.

Because of the high perimeter wall, it could not have been easy for neighbours to know that there was trouble inside Kiwanuka’s compound.

“The assailants hit him as he was getting out of his house and he fell down facing the floor. They then stole property from the house, scaled over the fence and sorted out what they wanted from a nearby garden then left what they considered useless. It was these belongings, including his files and clothes, that led neighbours to call the Police,” Kasiriivu says.

In Kiwanuka’s compound, the Police recovered an iron bar, which is suspected to have been used by the assailants. A postmortem report from Mulago Hospital indicated that the deceased had been hit with a blunt object, cracking his skull.

WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE?

The Police are ruling out foul play, maintaining that the deceased could have been a victim of iron bar hit men. The Police believe that the thugs could have monitored his movements prior to the attack.

According to neighbours, people in the area believed that Kiwanuka was a rich man because he worked in a bank. “They could have thought that he had a lot of money in the house,” the neighbour adds.

Kiwanuka’s brother, Emmy Mukasa, who resides in Kireka, says his brother had no grudge against anybody. “We believe he might have been a victim of iron bar hit men who have terrorised so many people in the area,” he says.

A month after the murder, investigations into Kiwanuka’s death seem to have hit a dead end and the local Police have failed to track down the killers.

According to a Police source, it was possible to track down the killers because they made off with the deceased’s phones.

The source says the Police could have done this by using the serial numbers of the phones. Mugumya, however, says the file is still open and investigations are on-going. 

“We do not conduct our investigation in the media,” he says. He is appealing to anyone with information to volunteer it to the Police.