NAIROBI, Kenya — At around 9 o’clock on the morning of Thursday, May 21, 2026, 24-year-old Brian Njung’e placed a phone call from inside Kiambu Police Station. He told his mother he had been arrested. By 2 p.m. same day, police were telling his family he was dead.
Brian, a student at Kiambu National Polytechnic, had been arrested in the Kirigiti area of Kiambu town and booked at the station earlier that morning. The reason for his arrest has not been made public. His phone call home set off a frantic dash to the police station by his mother and other family members, who arrived just before noon and immediately requested to see him.
They were told to wait.
For more than two hours, the family sat outside — not knowing that, according to police, their son and brother was already dead. Officers eventually called them in and informed them that Brian had allegedly taken his own life in the cells. Police claimed he had been alone at the time, as his cellmates had been taken to court.
The family has flatly rejected that account.
“Another death inside a police station,” said Hussein Khalid, CEO of VOCAL Africa, who raised the alarm publicly on Friday. “The family is crying foul and wants justice, arguing that the police story doesn’t add up.”
Khalid, a human rights activist and lawyer, called on the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) to launch an independent investigation into the circumstances of Brian’s death. As of the time of publication, no official police statement had been issued.
The tragedy is not an isolated one. According to a report by IPOA and the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), at least 17 deaths occurred in police custody between 2024 and 2025 alone. Among them was Albert Omondi Ojwang, who died in May 2025 at Nairobi’s Central Police Station, and 23-year-old Jack Leon Matoke, who died hours after being booked into Kawangware Police Station in December 2025. In Matoke’s case, police claimed he had hanged himself with his t-shirt — even though his body was reportedly still in full motorcycle gear.
IMLU reports have linked several of these deaths to injuries consistent with physical assault, torture, or suffocation — with families left waiting for justice that rarely comes.
Brian’s death comes just days after 22-year-old Sigalagala National Polytechnic student Derrick Peter Machanje was shot and killed during anti-fuel price hike protests in Kakamega, deepening national grief over young lives lost in the hands of state actors.
For Brian Njung’e’s family, the questions are simple — and so far, unanswered: How does a young man, healthy enough to call his mother at 9 a.m., die alone in a cell by noon? And who is accountable?
