The CCTV footage from Utumishi Girls’ Service High School tells a chilling story of how eight students allegedly walked into a dormitory and deliberately set it on fire, killing 16 of their classmates.
The footage, now central to a police investigation, shows five students entering the Marylyn Waithera dormitory at around 12:10am, when most students were fast asleep and oblivious of the impending danger.
From the surveillance footage, the students can be seen making their way to Cube 11, where they paused briefly before making their next move, without exchanging a single word among themselves.
More than 1,000 buildings have burned in multiple wildfires that have erupted around America’s second biggest city, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the students is seen attempting to conceal his face from the cameras, while clutching a slipper in her hands, presumably to muffle their movements around the dormitory.
A minute later, three of the girls can be seen hurriedly walking towards the dormitory’s door, with two others left behind. The duo who remained were in posession of a matchbox, which was used to start the initial blaze.
Footage captures the two girls light a match before casually walking towards the dorm door.
The students were then spotted heading towards a section of the dormitory where mattresses are stored, where they set another fire. This time, the blaze grew relatively faster.
After confirming the extent of the fire, the suspects can be seen walking out of the dormitory without looking back, leaving their sleeping classmates at the mercy of the growing inferno.
At 12:13 am, the fire had spread with frightening speed, and by this time, several students had woken up in a panic, trying to understand what was taking place.
Within just five minutes, the fire had grown to a massive scale, engulfing the dormitory as panicked students scrambled desperately to escape the thick smoke and towering flames.Investigators say the fire was deliberately started at the dormitory entrance, the main escape route for the students, after kerosene was maliciously smeared around the area. This effectively blocked any chance of escape once the blaze erupted, leaving many students trapped with nowhere to run for safety.
From the inferno, 16 students lost their lives in the fire, and 79 others were rushed to the hospital with injuries sustained as they tried to flee the burning building.
Notably, 10 of the deceased lost their lives at the heart of the blaze near the entrance, while six other victims deep inside the dormitory.
Police moved swiftly, arresting eight students in connection with the fire. The suspects are currently in custody as investigations continue and detectives piece together the full picture.
However, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI) confirmed that one of the suspects’ whereabouts is unknown after initially being released.
With the incident which has sent shock waves across the country, the Interior Cabinet Secretary has on May 31 ordered all schools to install CCTV cameras to monitor the movement of students and prevent such incidents from ever happening.
While speaking during a Thanksgiving ceremony at Kipsigis Girls, he stated that if the CCTV footage at Utumishi Girls had been released on time, the victims from the incident could have been saved.
