Witness in Obado trial taken to task for flip-flopping

A taxi driver who said he ferried Sharon Otieno to Kodera forest where she met her death has told a court that he now doubts the veracity of some of the statements his evidence.

Jackson Gombe told Justice Cecilia Githua, sitting at the Milimani High Court Criminal Division, that he couldn’t remember some parts in his statement to the police regarding what transpired on the night of September 3, 2018.

While being cross-examined by defence lawyer Elisha Ongoya, the witness denied having given detectives some of the information in his statement regarding the murder of Sharon.

Gombe has been on the stand for about a week, during which he has been put to task to explain the inconsistencies in his evidence.

The defence counsel, led by Kioko Kilukumi and Rogers Sagana, have claimed that Gombe’s evidence before the court was a prosecution theory imposed on him to implicate former Migori Governor Okoth Obado.

“You are a planted witness and have no idea what happened on that day. You did not participate at all on any events of September 3, 2018,” Sagana said.

He has been testifying against Obado, his personal assistant Michael Oyamo and county official Caspal Obiero, who are being tried over the murder of Sharon and her unborn baby in Homa Bay County.
On Friday, Gombe admitted to the court that he would not believe his own evidence because his statements were contradictory.

The witness was once a suspect in the murder but was later released and put under the witness protection agency.

He, however, chose to leave the agency on his own volition. Gombe told the court that he had two statements. One was written at Oyugis station in Migori county and another at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) offices.

He denied telling the police some words in his statement. It is believed that this was when they were headed to Kodera when the journalist, who was in the company of Sharon, managed to escape from his abductors.

When lawyer Ongayo asked him whether he knew any of the passengers aboard his taxi, he replied they were all strangers to him.

Gombe told the court that the strangers in his car instructed him to stop at a thicket, turn off the lights and wait for them in the dark to which he obliged.

Asked by Ongoya whether it was normal or unusual for someone to stay put in the dark as instructed by strangers, Gombe said: “I can’t recall if my brain was functioning properly”.

He also confessed to not telling the police the truth when he mentioned that he went back to Uriri around midnight after dropping off and waiting for the strangers at a thicket somewhere in Oyugis.
Asked if anyone had instructed him to lie to the court, Gombe replied “No one”.

In his evidence, Gombe narrated to the court how he was called by a man identified as Elvis, instructing him to go and pick Oyamo in Uriri.

Elvis was a Kenya Police guard assigned to Obado at the time. Gombe said he did as instructed and proceeded to Uriri, where he found Oyamo in the company of two other men.
He said they were strangers to him.

But his statement, which he read out in court, contains a description of the three men.
One was Oyamo, and the second he describes as a tall dark man from Awendo whom he used to see in the company of Obado during the campaigns.

He also describes the third man whom he says is a person not new to him as he also used to be in Obado’s campaign team. The names of the men are not given.

But Gombe again disowned that part of his statement, saying he did not know the men that were with Oyamo. These men, it is said, are the ones who drove off with the driver in the company of Sharon and the journalist on the fateful day.

Records show that Oyamo was left behind while Sharon and the journalist went with the three men in the vehicle. But the journalist allegedly managed to escape from the moving vehicle and Sharon was left alone with her “assailants”.