Photos: Police gun down husband of slain "Nairobi's prettiest thug"
Months after his wife and partner in crime met her death in
the hands of the police, notorious thug Mwaniki aka Mwanii Sparta has
been gunned down.
Mwanii, one of the most wanted criminals in Nairobi, was killed by police last weekend at Witeithie Estate in Juja.
Mwanii’s wife, Claire Mwaniki, who was christened
“Nairobi’s prettiest thug” was shot dead last May in Kayole after a
shootout with the police. They had a son together.
According to senior officers in Kayole, Mwaniki was callous
while executing his evil schemes. Until his death, he was the leader of
Gaza, a ruthless criminal gang whose ideology is cult-like and draws
inspiration from a jailed Jamaican artist Vybz Kartel, who is serving a
life sentence for killing his associate, the police said.
Besides being ruthless, Mwaniki is said to have been crafty
and would be quick to eliminate a competitor or anyone he suspected was
spying for the authorities.
"Mwaniki at one point killed two colleagues for befriending
his wife Claire, who has since been killed,” a senior officer who did
not want to be named told the Capital FM News investigative team.
Mwaniki, who was with four other people at the time of the
ambush, was shot dead after engaging police in a two-hour gun battle.
The rest of the gangsters managed to get away.
Police reinforcements were called in from Nairobi and
Kiambu counties to end the deadly shoot-out. Realizing that they had
been outnumbered, the gang tried to escape.
Nairobi County Police Commander Japheth Koome has confirmed that the slain suspect is indeed Mwaniki.
Mwanii had managed to elude many police traps, his
elusiveness being attributed to his access to insider information
regarding impending arrests and is suspected to be behind many police
deaths, most of whom he fell out with.
On how police established the whereabouts of Mwaniki, one
of the detectives said they infiltrated the Gaza gang, which has about
six surviving members on the run while the rest have died while
confronting the police.
“It was not an easy task to get him. He has foot soldiers
who would always alert him every time we would plan a raid,” the
detective said.
Of his informers, he admitted some are police officers who benefitted from his proceeds of crime.
Early on Sunday, Mwaniki had called their supplier (a
police informer ) of ammunition, asking for a delivery later in the
afternoon.
“As soon as our informer alerted us about his hideout and
that they were to meet that afternoon, we prepared a team and we had
hoped that he will be arrested together with the rest of the criminals.
But we went there cautiously since they were armed,” the detective
revealed.
At around 2pm on Sunday, the informer accompanied by a team
of armed police officers in plain clothes arrived at Mwaniki’s hideout
in Thika where they met ‘face to face’.
"Mwaniki and one of his accomplices had gone to one of the residences to “smoke weed. They did not know who we were.”
But as shrewd as he was, Mwaniki smelt a rat; there were suspicious faces in his ‘kingdom.’
It is at that time, the detective narrated, that he removed his Ceska pistol and started firing at them.
“A fierce shootout ensued and in the process both were killed…the Gaza leader was dead,” he said.
The Ceska pistol serial number was A879675, belonging to the army. Police officers also recovered 21 rounds of ammunition. They might have stolen from an army officer…” the officer explained.
But in the house, there were six others gang members who
were also armed with an AK-47, which they stole from two police officers
they had killed two days before within the same area.
The six managed to escape and days later, police are still pursuing them.
“We have profiled them…we know their names and a little bit of their history,” he said.
Hours later after the raid and the killing of Mwaniki and
his accomplice, the person police were relying on for intelligence, was
also killed.
“He made a huge mistake…he went back to them without
informing us at an unknown location but still within Thika. They
brutally killed him,” the officer said.
The said informer had served a jail sentence before he was
released. According to police, his colleagues tortured him before
strangling him to death.
“Though he was not seen during the raid, they must have known that he was the one who spied on them."
Mwaniki hails from Kirinyaga County but was raised in Kayole, B3 area.
He went to Imara Primary School and later proceeded to Joy Valley Secondary School in the same area.
Police records show that he started as a petty thief
engaging in muggings and snatching handbags before he graduated to
bigger’ crimes.
His first assignment was to protect a tycoon’s land in Kayole together with another gang of 10.
Source: Capital FM
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