Inquest Ordered in DayStar Student’s Fatal Fall from Ngara Apartment
"The footage captured one of the respondents accessing the down floor from the balcony while another image of the victim was captured trying to access the same but missed," he stated.
A Nairobi court has released seven university students who were under investigation over the mysterious death of their colleague in a residential apartment in Ngara within Nairobi county.
Milimani Chief Magistrate Dolphina Alego closed the miscellaneous application file, which the DCI, Parklands, had opened to investigate the seven following the incident that occurred in the wee hours of November 23, 2025.
The officer investigating the matter, Corporal Johnes Nyangige, who is attached to Parklands Police Station, informed the court that after completion of their investigations, they forwarded the findings to the ODPP for the way forward.
“We forwarded the file to the ODPP, and the direction we received through a letter dated December 1, 2025, is to open an inquest file and make the seven as state witnesses,” the officer told the court.
The officer elaborated to the court on what they found after retrieving the CCTV footage from Harmony Plaza, where the incident took place, and stated no one among the seven was captured committing the offence.
Nyangige told the court that the respondents were on the 12th floor of the building, and one of the respondents was captured accessing the 11th floor by jumping from the balcony.
“The footage captured one of the respondents accessing the down floor from the balcony while another image of the victim was captured trying to access the same but missed,” he stated.
The respondents are students from various universities who had been in custody for seven days for investigations following the death of Lorna Kathambi Karani, a student of DayStar University.
The court heard that some of the respondents were from Kenyatta University, KCA University, Mt Kenya University, and the University of Nairobi.
They were arrested on November 23, 2025, within the Ngara area after Patrick Mbugua, a security guard at Harmony Plaza, made a report of the incident.
In his report, Mbugua informed the DCI that at around 0227 hours, a group of six students proceeded to the 12th-floor room K78, and they started partying and making noise by shouting, singing, and playing guitar. He moved to the said room and ordered them to stop, which they obeyed.
At around 0410 hours, four of them left the premises and later returned. The guard asked one of them, Dennis Kariuki Gitonga, who is a tenant in the said apartment, 11th floor, whether they were his visitors, which he confirmed.
They proceeded to the lift, and after a few minutes, the guard heard a loud bang. He hurriedly went to check, where he found the body of a 23-year-old Lorna Kathambi Karani, a fourth-year student at Daystar University, lying dead on the ground floor.
The matter was reported at Parklands Police Station, and the officers from the station, accompanied by the DCI, visited the scene and confirmed the same.
“The body had visible injuries on the head, lying dead, suspected to have been murdered,” Nyangige stated.
During investigations, the seven Dennis Kariuki Gitonga, Loise Osiro, Lucy Moraa, Ali Kibwana Kamaku, Precious Kendi Mutembei, Austine Ochieng, and Wendy Kerubo were arrested in connection with the death since they were together throughout the night.
Corporal Nyangige further informed the court that the investigators took blood samples from the body of the deceased, took it to the toxicology lab for analysis, and revealed that the deceased was intoxicated at the time of the incident.
The post-mortem, which was conducted, revealed that the deceased died of trauma following the tragic fall from the 12th floor of the building.
