An employee of Migori County government narrated before Milimani High Court Judge, Justice Cecilia Githua how police officers harassed and pressured him to sign statements placing him at the scene where Sharon Otieno was found murdered.
Grado Ochola, who presently works at the county’s livestock department, told Justice Cecilia Githua that despite being coerced, he refused to sign the documents.
According to the witness, some of the documents police officers were forcing him to sign read that “I was at Kodero forest on September 3, 2018, with this car and Owade bridge.”
Former Migori Governor Okoth Obado, his personal assistant Micheal Oyamo, and clerk Caspal Obiero are on trial for the murder of Sharon and her unborn baby.
The particulars of the crime indicate that the three, along with others not yet in court, murdered Sharon and her unborn bay on September 3-4, 2018, in Owade, Rachuonyo, Homa Bay county.
Sharon had seven stab wounds and two slash wounds at the time of her death. The initial stab wound was so deep that it went all the way through her womb. This resulted in the unborn child’s death. The pregnancy was 28 weeks old.
Ochola, also a distant relative of Obado, said he had been arrested over the murder of Sharon and was held for 10 days as the matter was being investigated.
The officers he said, took him round from one station to another. It started from Migori, to Oyugi’s, then Ahero with the journey ending at Muthaiga police station. For 10 days he declined to cede to the investigators demands by refusing to sign a statement that had details strange to him.
“When they arrested me they told me the car I hired was used by the killers in eliminating Sharon. It dropped the killers from Migori to Rongo,” said the witness.
