Charity Cheboi and Allan: Remembering the Mother and Son in the 2021 Jogoo Road Tragedy
Archive photo: Courtesy/K24 Digital, February 26, 2021.
A retrospective on the February 2021 deaths of Charity Cheboi, her eight-year-old son Allan and a seminarian at Nairobi’s Government Quarters.
The first alarm came from school. Allan Kipng’etich had missed classes, and his father, Kenneth Kiptanui, could not reach the boy’s mother by phone.
That concern led him to Charity Cherop Cheboi’s home at Government Quarters along Jogoo Road. On February 23, 2021, Charity and Allan were found dead inside the apartment. A third person, a seminarian identified in contemporary coverage as Kelvin or Kevin Kipkoech, was also found dead.
According to Citizen Digital’s reporting at the time, Kiptanui told investigators that the school contacted him after Allan failed to attend classes on Monday. When calls to Charity went unanswered, he went to her home.
A mother’s final reported call
Charity worked for the Registrar of Persons at Mathare Huduma Centre. Away from her job, she was a mother to a Grade Two pupil whose absence would set off the search.
Her father, Matthew Cheboi, later recalled speaking to her on Sunday. She told him she had come from church and was buying food before returning home with Allan, according to a February 26 report by Kenyans.co.ke. It was their last conversation.
The same report described another family waiting for a loved one to return. Elijah Kimaiyo said his son, the seminarian, had asked for fare home. His parents had expected him after his examinations. They subsequently received news of his death.
What the medical examinations established
Post-mortem examinations at Chiromo Mortuary provided a clearer account of the deaths. Chief Government Pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor established that Charity and Allan had died from smothering. The seminarian died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
As K24 reported on February 26, the condition of the bodies suggested that mother and child had died approximately a day before the seminarian. That was an estimate based on the examination, rather than a precise time of death.
The medical findings helped investigators separate the sequence of events. They did not explain the motive.
The investigation and the reported police conclusion
Homicide detectives and officers from Buruburu Police Station examined the apartment and reconstructed the scene. Early reporting reflected uncertainty about whether another person had been involved.
By early March, however, police were reported to have concluded that the seminarian killed Charity and Allan before taking his own life. The Star’s subsequent account said investigators reached that position after another visit to the scene on February 27.
The same report said the motive had not been established and that officers planned further inquiries at the seminary. This was a reported police conclusion, not a finding reached at a criminal trial.
The limits of what is known
His family described him as a student at St Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Nairobi who was in his eighth year of formation. Some contemporary reports described him as Charity’s boyfriend. Neither detail, by itself, establishes why the killings happened.
Retelling the tragedy as a consequence of a forbidden relationship or impending priesthood would go beyond the findings reported by investigators. The available accounts establish the deaths, the medical findings and the police conclusion. They leave the motive unanswered.
For Charity’s family, the loss was of a daughter and a grandson. For Allan’s father, a call about missed classes became the beginning of devastating news. Their lives deserve to be remembered with the same care given to establishing how they died.
Editor’s note: This article is a retrospective based on contemporary reporting from February and March 2021. Daily Report KE has not independently obtained the police case file or original post-mortem reports.
