Lust cost a young carjacker his life

What do you think the average age of those dreaded carjackers is?

Despite many news reports and eye witness accounts, many Kenyans still refuse to believe that this is mainly the preserve of teenagers who mostly hail from the Eastlands area.

Omosh as he was called by everybody in the estate was a good looking but very quite and reserved boy. He never gave his parents any trouble and nobody would have believed that he had another life of the violent kind.

He liked to get drunk on weekends and have a good time with the girls and that is how he was so easily lured into the world of crime. But what made it even easier for him were the drugs they were instructed to use by their “instructors” before they went on their missions. They would make them ruthless and they would have no fear in doing anything… even killing innocent people.

Omosh had been introduced into the lucrative “business” by a friend who had taken him to “the instructor” who lived somewhere in the sprawling Eastleigh estate in Nairobi. It had taken a very short time for him to be trained on how to handle a pistol and even an AK47. Their first job went like clockwork. They carjacked a man in a Pajero and made away with his car and the contents of his wallet. They delivered the car where they were told to and the next day Omosh had a cool Kshs 20,000 in his pocket. More money than he had ever handled in his entire life.

Overnight his lifestyle changed. He bought nice clothes and would have pretty riotous weekends. The girls loved him less for his lewd jokes (which emerged only when he was drunk) and more for his generosity and the fact that he always seemed to be loaded. Everybody accepted his story that he dealt with second hand clothes and was a major importer.

What amazed Omosh was the fact that money could literally buy anything. Even flying squad policemen who looked the other way or did not respond to distress calls fast enough. That made Omosh feel invincible. Little did he know that that was exactly where the most danger lay.

The business had changed and it had started becoming more and more difficult to dispose of stolen cars. They should have seen it coming, there was no way that insurance companies were going to lose money and so sophisticated devices like tracking gadgets had come into the market with a vengeance. Even with new number plates and a change of colour, stolen cars could still be detected long before they reached the Namanga border on their way to be sold in Tanzania.

So carjackers now preferred to hijack matatus and public transport vehicles. Nairobians were cash-rich and it was not unusual to end up with over 100,000 in cash from a single Nissan matatu, not counting the mobile phones and other valuables taken. And this was the kind of job that would easily be pulled off by 4 people only. Once you drew a gun nobody was going to argue with you.

Actually the thrill of the game consumed Omosh until he was totally out of control. He loved the power of grown men doing as they were told as he wielded the gun. But even more he loved the way nice smartly-dressed ladies would quickly follow instructions when he ordered them to do whatever he wanted them to do. He got very addicted to raping women in the matatus that they hijacked and that was what cost him his life in the end.

On that fateful day, they had hijacked a matatu going to Kikuyu and the wallets and all the valuables had quickly been taken from the terrified passengers. And as was the usual procedure to immobilize their victims, the men were asked to remove their trousers and the women their tops and hand them over to the carjackers. Women who happened to be wearing dresses just handed over the entire dress.

The mission had been successful and Omosh and his gang had their cash and valuables and should have left then. But how was Omosh going to leave the scene without some free sex? That was just not possible. More so when he had already spotted some pretty appetizing female thighs amongst the frightened passengers. So Omosh took his pick and moved to the bush behind.

“Beshte fanya haraka maze, hio unaweza kupata huko mbele.” One of the gang members warned as Omosh hammered away oblivious of the warning. It was quite possible that the poor woman was somebody’s wife and this was an even bigger turn on for Omosh.

Unknown to them another matatu driver had seen Omosh and his gang carjacking the matatu and had called the police. Also unknown to the gang was the fact that the policemen in the flying squad had decided that it was time to eliminate the Omosh gang since there was a new more ruthless and much more generous gang that had emerged. The cops were no fools they knew that if the gangs they dealt with remained alive for too long, they would one day start “singing” some undesirable songs.

The flying squad officers arrived just as Omondi was zipping up to leave. Two of the gang members had already made good their escape but Omondi and one member of the gang went down in a hail of police bullets. Omondi did not fire a single bullet to protect himself. He was just too shocked because he even knew one of the flying squad officers whom he considered a close friend and associate.

Omosh’s family was grief stricken and are still pursuing a case to sue the police for mistaking their 19 year old son for a carjacker. Their son did not even know how to handle a gun, they will tell anybody who cares to listen. To this day they have never believed that Omosh the model, polite boy in the house was not only a carjacker but a serial rapist as well.