GITARU, Kenya — Tension gripped the Gitaru stretch of the Nairobi-Nakuru highway on Wednesday, December 31, after a fatal road accident escalated into a violent confrontation. A 14-seater Public Service Vehicle (PSV) was reduced to ashes by an angry mob of boda boda operators following the death of a fellow rider.
The deceased, a 22-year-old motorcycle operator, was reportedly in the process of delivering a carpet when the tragedy occurred.
According to eyewitness accounts, the matatu—suspected to be under the NNK SACCO management, struck the motorcyclist while attempting to negotiate a turn at a section of the highway widely regarded as a blackspot. The young man reportedly died on impact.
News of the rider’s death spread rapidly, prompting his colleagues to congregate at the scene. In a swift act of retaliation, the riders blocked the vital transport artery before dousing the vehicle in fuel and setting it alight.
Thick plumes of smoke from the burning wreckage forced a total standstill on the highway, leaving hundreds of commuters stranded on the final day of the year.
This incident is the latest in a worrying trend of retaliatory arson involving the motorcycle transport sector. Just over a week ago, on December 22, a similar scene unfolded in the Salgaa area of Nakuru County.
In that instance, a 65-seater bus en route to Kampala was torched after a collision that claimed the lives of two people on a motorbike. Witnesses to the Salgaa incident described a chaotic scene where riders smashed windows and forced passengers to flee before the bus was incinerated into a metallic shell.
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The rising cases of mob justice have drawn the ire of transport stakeholders. Following the earlier Salgaa incident, the Motorists Association of Kenya (MAK) issued a stern warning against the culture of lawlessness, calling for a decisive crackdown on those who resort to violence.
“The Motorists Association of Kenya (MAK) issued a strong condemnation of the violence. It urged the National Police Service to pursue and prosecute those responsible for the destruction,” the statement read.
Local authorities have arrived at the Gitaru scene to clear the wreckage and restore the flow of traffic, though no arrests were immediately confirmed following Wednesday’s arson.
