British Man Accused of Killing a Kenyan Woman Cleared of the Charges

A British businessman who was charged with murder of a Kenyan woman was recently cleared of the charges by a Kenyan court, and says that a private detective helped him prove his innocence. Richard Alden few out of Kenya on Saturday to return to the UK after he was cleared in the case that lasted 18 months.

Richard Alden had taken injured 42-year-old Grace Wangechi Kinyanjui to hospital for treatment after she was shot at his residence in Nairobi in June 2016, but was charged for causing her death at a court in Nairobi six days later.

The father-of-three says he was on the blink of being locked in one of most notorious jails in Africa, but a former forensic firearms expert working with the Metropolitan Police in the UK, Geoffrey Arnold, helped him convince the prosecutors to drop the case in October this year. The detective was able to prove that Grace Kinyanjui had been posing for selfies with the firearm in the mirror when the gun accidentally went off, with the bullet rebounding off the floor and fatally hitting her.

Richard Alden, 54, tells The Sunday Times: “Initially it was a public witch-hunt. Grace Kinyanjui tragically died after being hit by a rebounding bullet. I was going to be the sacrificial lamb. Somebody’s died; there’s been a gunshot and the person who has supposedly perpetrated it is a foreigner and not only that, he is supposedly a very wealthy foreigner.”

Alden however confesses to having erred by leaving a bullet inside his gun, saying: “There is an element of culpability in that — and I am not hiding from it. I am going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. There is a tragic story behind this.”

He has since gone back to the UK but says he still loves Kenya and plans to return on holidays.