Relatives of victims of the Shakahola fasting ritual linked to Pastor Paul Mackenzie will wait longer to get the bodies of their kin for burial.
This is after Chief Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor said that DNA results from the Government Chemists were yet to reach his team.
He said this after conducting postmortem on 26 bodies at the Malindi Sub County Hospital Funeral home on Tuesday afternoon where he added that two female bodies turned out pregnant hence pushing the number to 26 instead of the initial 24 that they were sure of.
“We have not reached that level of releasing bodies to relatives because the process of DNA is still ongoing and they (Government Chemist) have not given us a go-ahead because we are yet to receive reports of any matches so we need to wait for them. In the course of next week, we will be with the government chemist then they will brief us on the process of what is going on there. That is when we will be able to tell you the number of people who have been identified,” he said.
He added that his team will be meeting a team from the government chemist next week for deliberations before any further step is taken.
“Usually you take DNA samples from the relative and that of the deceased then you do what is called matching at the government chemist once they match they give us a report which we look at and we are able to really identify who this person really is,” he said.
The pathologists could not establish the cause of death of 18 bodies that were examined today because of the level of deterioration while only eight died of starvation.
“As we were doing post-mortem today we realized that two females were pregnant hence pushing the number from 24 to 26. Adults were 14 and ten were children while the identity of two bodies could not be established,” he added.
There were eight male bodies and 14 female bodies while the gender of four bodies could not be established.
