The family of city lawyer Assa Nyakundi, who shot and killed his son Joseph, is yet to come to terms with the tragedy.
Not only is the incident painful to them but it has reopened wounds of a similar earlier experience.
“We have no answers to the incident,” a member of his family in Kisii County said Wednesday as police continue to investigate circumstances of the Sunday shooting.
To his family, the shooting revives memories of the brutal murder of their father, Mr Michael Nyakundi, about a decade ago.
They were yet to heal from the wounds when they were hit by the latest death of Joseph.
SHOCK
“The Sunday incident has left us in shock. It is double tragedy with one of our own dead and another in hospital,” Assa’s younger brother, Bishop Eliud Nyakundi, who is a lecturer at Kisii University, told Nation.
“Memories of our late father are still fresh in our minds and the latest incident only adds salt to injury,” he said.
In 2010, robbers broke into the home of the the retired clergyman and shot him dead.
The armed gang stormed the home in Ikuruma village, Marani Sub-County in Kisii and forced the old man to lie on his bed before shooting him at close range as his wife watched.
PLEAS
The Rev Michael Nyakundi, 85, had pleaded with the thugs to spare him but in vain.
He gave them an unknown amount of money but they still murdered him. They did not steal any other item.
The clergyman’s killing prompted the beheading of four suspected gangsters in the same village by the dreaded Sungu Sungu vigilante group.
"We are yet to come to terms with our father’s murder. He had just returned from the US after undergoing an expensive spinal surgery that cost the family Sh5 million. Why would anyone want to kill an 85-year-old man?" Assa had said about his father’s brutal murder then.
FAMILY MEETING
On Wednesday, Assa’s close relatives from Kisii travelled to Nairobi where they held a family meeting, deliberating on the next move for the man who has been recuperating at Nairobi Hospital under heavy police guard following the shocking shooting incident.
In an in-depth interview with the Nation on Wednesday morning, Rev Eliud Nyakundi, who leads the Kenya Assemblies Churches in Gusii region, said the incident, as bad as it may be, is irreversible and they are now asking God to give them grace to endure.
He further said his brother is not a criminal as some people are trying to insinuate, adding that the lawyer is even a church elder, brought up in a Christian background.
CHURCH DEACON
Besides being an advocate, Assa is a deacon at International Christian Centre while his brother Eliud is an executive member of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK).