A rally car driver described on Wednesday how he saw the great-grandson of Kenya’s most famous white settler shoot dead a black Kenyan ”by mistake” in a trial that has awakened animosities from colonial times.
Thomas Cholmondeley, a 38-year-old descendant of Lord Delamere, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Robert Njoya, a local stonemason he accuses of poaching on his land.
Dressed in a khaki linen suit and brown boots, he sat impassively on a wooden bench in a packed Nairobi court for the third day of the trial that has gripped the East African nation.
Carl Pierre Tundo, who was with Cholmondeley at the time of the shooting in May, said the accused mistakenly hit local stonemason Robert Njoya while trying to shoot at hunting dogs.
”He shot Njoya by mistake while aiming at the dogs. After the shootout, Tom tried to save his life by taking him to the hospital and constantly kept saying to him ‘Don’t worry … things will be ok’,” Tundo said.
Tundo was arrested with Cholmondeley in May but later released. Cholmondeley has told police he was taking an evening walk when he and a friend ran into men armed with machetes and carrying a dead impala.
The men set dogs on the pair and when asked to stop and Cholmondeley then shot the dogs and Njoya, police said.
The trial has stirred resentment dating back to British colonial times in a case rights groups call a fight between the haves and have-nots.
The absence of stenographers in court reduced the judge to taking copious notes in longhand as Tundo testified, with proceedings conducted in a mixture of English and Kiswahili.
Tundo said he saw Cholmondeley kneel down and take aim with his high-calibre rifle as they were walking on the Delamere’s 22 260ha Rift Valley Soysambu Ranch.
”Tom fired three to four shots more in quick succession then I heard Tom shouting for me to run and get the car. ‘I have hit someone by mistake’ he yelled,” Tundo said.
”I found Tom trying to give first aid. Njoya was bleeding in the lower region around the waist.”
The arrest of the tall aristocrat came a year after prosecutors dropped charges against him for killing a wildlife ranger, a move that sparked protests.
Although many Kenyans complain about white farmers, many others also resent rich black Kenyans who allocated themselves massive tracts of land after independence from Britain in 1963.
The Delamere’s flamboyant lifestyle, along with that of other wealthy white settlers, gave rise to the ”Happy Valley” set, notorious for their sex scandals and gin-soaked exploits, and immortalised in the novel and film White Mischief. — Reuters