A victim of police shooting at City Park on May 20, Bernard Chege has accused police of harassment and treating him like a suspect.
Chege, 26, was in the company of 41-year-old Janet Wangui Waiyaki in a black Toyota Fielder when the incident happened. Waiyaki was pronounced dead on arrival to hospital
Lying in a hospital bed where he has been nursing gunshot wounds, a tearful Chege question why police are so hard on him to give up DNA samples.
For the past few days, he has been moving from one ward to another at Avenue Hospital in the effort to dodge police officers pushing him to sign more documents.
“I’m told they want to confirm if it was me who was there (at City Park). It’s the same police who got me from the car with bullet wounds. How can I be a suspect? And they are forcing me to sign (a document) saying (that) if I don’t comply they will use force,” he told Daily Nation.
“Let the Inspector-General of Police (Joseph Boinnet) do his job and do it right,”Chege said. “I’m getting a lot of pressure here in hospital. My wounds haven’t healed, but the police are always here”.
Chege’s family lawyer said police had in earlier asked some hospital staff to extract Chege’s DNA.
“There is a procedure through which DNA tests are done. As a police officer, you don’t do a letter to a hospital directing one of the health workers to remove samples and if that patient is not complying, you want to apply force,” said the lawyer.
“If there are samples that they require, they know the law. And they should be able to follow that law and we’ll be able to advise our client whether it is self-incriminating or not. But if there are reasons for him to provide samples, we have no problem with that,” he added.
Faith Wangechi, Chege’s mother said she fears for her son’s life.
Chege was shot at when he was flagged down by police but instead drove away.
The car he was in with Waiyaki was sprayed with bullets leaving him with serious injuries while the mother of three succumbed to the injuries a short while after.