A prosecution witness in the murder case facing former Migori Governor Zachary Okoth Obado testified that he drove the deceased Sharon Otieno in his car on the fateful day when she disappeared.
Jackson Otieno Gombe, testifying against Obado and his co-accused Michael Oyamo and Caspal Obiero, confirmed that he may have inadvertently driven Sharon Otieno to her death.
He told trial judge Cecilia Githua that on September 3, 2018, he received a call from a police officer instructing him to go to Homa Bay. He was to meet Michael Oyamo, the governor’s personal assistant.
Gombe said he picked up Michael Oyamo at around 6 p.m. as instructed and then traveled to Rongo. Afterward, they proceeded to a nearby hotel known as Gracia Hotel. Here, Oyamo picked up Sharon and two men, one of whom had accompanied the expectant university student, and took them to the taxi, Gombe testified.
He said he drove them to a nearby petrol station where Oyamo met two other men who entered his car. Gombe informed the court that Oyamo remained in Homa Bay while one of the three men who were with Oyamo told him to drive them to Kisumu.
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The cab driver testified that while they were en route, one of the men instructed him to drop them off near Sondu market. Gombe said he was directed to take a diversion from the main road onto a murram road, which he was not familiar with.
According to Gombe’s account, they arrived near some bushes, where he was ordered to stop the vehicle. At that point, the men and the lady (Sharon) alighted from the taxi, leaving him in the vehicle.
The driver said the men took Sharon into the forest, but they never returned with her nor the man who had accompanied her. He said he waited for approximately 10-20 minutes before one of the men knocked on his car window and asked whether he had fallen asleep during the wait.
“When I asked them where the woman was, they replied in Kiswahili huyo tumemwacha kwao (we’ve left her at her home),” the witness told Magistrate Githua as he was led in his evidence by the prosecutor.
That was apparently the last time Sharon Otieo was seen alive as her body was discovered the following day in the bushes on the side of the road.
She suffered seven stab wounds and two slash wounds. The first stab wound was particularly devastating as it pierced through her womb, resulting in the tragic death of her unborn baby, who was just 12 weeks away from being born.
The witness said that he learned later from a police investigator that the lady he had driven to the forest was indeed Sharon Otieno, the 26-year-old victim whose murder had shocked the nation.
