You may have noticed a young KQ pilot in the obituaries this past week. His is a sad tale but one worth narrating because it could save your life:

Martin (his name) went for a drink with his buddies last Saturday in some joint in Lang’ata. At around 11pm, like all young people do, they decided to change the venue and go to Westlands. Since the other guys had drinks to finish up, Martin decided to proceed to Westlands & jumped into his car-a new Mercedes hardly 6 months old. As he approached the NIC/Bunyala road roundabout, he noticed his car was losing momentum and it finally stalled in the middle of the road.

He quickly called the buddies he had left in Langata and told them that his car had stalled. These guys arrived in less than 10 minutes only to find Martin brutally attacked and robbed. They rushed him to Nairobi Hospital and he underwent emergency operation but unfortunately he died a few hours later. A senseless loss of young life.

I share this with you so that you may be informed that Uhuru highway is a den of murderous robbers. It is the second time I have heard of such an incident. The last one was a few months ago when my former colleague was leaving a gym just near the NIC bank. On the same roundabout, a ladies car had stalled at about 9:00pm. The goons attacked her and were now dragging the kicking and screaming woman into the bush to possibly rape her. Ken was brave enough to hoot like mad and flash his lights at the guys and they let go of the woman. He opened his passenger door and she jumped in and they fled to the central police station......

May be Martin may still be alive if only he had abandoned his car and run towards Nakumat uhuru highway where there guards - but this is just a may be! He definitely was not aware that he was in grave danger as he sat in his car to make the call to his friends.

Clearly, Uhuru Highway is not a place for your car to stall at night.

Be warned and take care.

Source: unknown but believed credible

What is sad is that it is just malice, why rob then kill a person. That is the thing I don't understand.

Knew the dude, was ahead of me in High school...RIP Martin Njuma.

Very sad indeed. RIP Martin and condolences to his family...

Those Uhuru Highway stories are very true btw, i heard of a dude who was clobbered to dead at about 7pm along Uhuru highway last year,yet he had nothing 'stealable' he had left all his stuff in his hotel room and gone for an evening stroll only to never return to his room in a city centre hotel! Imagine at 7..all for nothing? Uhuru highway is a danger zone for motorists if your car stalls,pedestrians after dark and a dangerous rape zone for women(there's a time some organisation had put up posters warning women to stay off Uhuru park and Uhuru highway as it's a rapists den). Why do these thugs steal and kill?cant they just steal and let you go peacefully now that they've accomplished their evil mission? Ands is it that the Kenyan cops cant deal with this menace once and for all?wameshindwa na kazi? Ama they're waiting for more lives to be lost before they act??NKT!

If you want to get the real picture of how this place is unsafe check police records for the past three months...i bet just browsing through the reports could make you cut weight by half due to the depression it induces.

These people are probably the most hurtless and numb human beings you'll ever come across...and it gets worse if they feel you are doing fine.Intelligentsia couldnt be more right if something happens to your car along this stretch,just dash to the nearest lit place.Apparently they hide below the railwayline.

martins story is a sad one we buried him on sato.the thugs didn't have anything to do with the car stalling.he's mots just stalled something that can happen to all of us,the messed up part is the thugs were lying in wait.it did not take more than 5 minutes for his friends to come to the spot and by that time marto had already been attacked and the thugs fled.from the look of things these guys are permanently based there,and the police know about this it's a pity nobody is doing anything about it.

It's the fan belt that katikad. was it a Mercedes ama a BMW?

This issue is being exaggerated. Just received an e-mail containing this story. Well, it is true; these stories only make news when the middle and upper class are affected. I am sorry for that dude, no one deserves to die that way. My condolences to the family and friends

Every day, we receive a min.of 5 corpses from the slums who have been murdered, but they hardly make news. So many Kenyans, especially in the slums, get killed everyday, why is this making news? It is just not in Uhuru Highway, it is everywhere in Nai.

They kill the rich when they want attention. He was in a Merc, they did not need any another reason. They are just young, hopeless dudes looking for a meal. They do not do it on purpose. Some are even kind (or callous, depending on how you look at it) enough to bring the victim to us or they call us to take the victim to hospital or they just tell us to come pick the corpse.

Believe it or not, by looking at extent of injuries on a corpse/extent of viciousness, you can tell whether murder was intentional or the attack was just meant to impair the victim. For most cases, it is just meant to impair. If I get a chance, I will try and explain more. However, I am not disputing that there are those who do kill just for the sake of it.

And there is nothing like ‘senseless death’. Death is not supposed to make sense; it is just supposed to happen.

I am not a psychiatrist or a criminologist, nor am I defending them. I assist a certain pathologist at the local mortuaries, my work has taught me a thing or two about Nai crime life and how these guys think.

@xtina; The insecurity at Uhuru highway is not being highlited because it is affecting "the rich" in our society. NO! It is because this road is one the three major arteries that feed people into the city....the other two being Thika road and Waiyaki Way.

This insecurity is affecting close to one third of the people who travel to the CBD each day.

And the most affected are pedestrians - notice that motorists are mostly attacked when they are immobile [or forcibly] immobilised

@xtina...thats a large dose of reality check to keep us in perspective, so we focus us not only on this sad event but at the larger picture of insecurity at the macro level. BTW, min. 5 pips B.I.D. daily is mind numbing for any hosi, considering others never reach there...

@kazikwisha am glad something is being done, and not finger pointing all over as we kenyans (esp middle-class) are wont to do. This is the pro-activness we need rather than lamenting month in month out the way that thread of road accidents has been each time an accident occurs.
Such efforts have now won u a participant in me hii sunday.