Police gun down husband of slain "Nairobi's prettiest thug"

Months after his wife and partner in crime met her death in the hands of the police, notorious thug Mwaniki aka Mwanii Sparta has been gunned down.

Mwanii, one of the most wanted criminals in Nairobi, was killed by police last weekend at Witeithie Estate in Juja.

Mwanii’s wife, Claire Mwaniki, who was christened “Nairobi’s prettiest thug” was shot dead last May in Kayole after a shootout with the police. They had a son together. See the report: here

According to senior officers in Kayole, Mwaniki was callous while executing his evil schemes. Until his death, he was the leader of Gaza, a ruthless criminal gang whose ideology is cult-like and draws inspiration from a jailed Jamaican artist Vybz Kartel, who is serving a life sentence for killing his associate, the police said.

Besides being ruthless, Mwaniki is said to have been crafty and would be quick to eliminate a competitor or anyone he suspected was spying for the authorities.

"Mwaniki at one point killed two colleagues for befriending his wife Claire, who has since been killed,” a senior officer who did not want to be named told the Capital FM News investigative team.

Mwaniki, who was with four other people at the time of the ambush, was shot dead after engaging police in a two-hour gun battle. The rest of the gangsters managed to get away.

Police reinforcements were called in from Nairobi and Kiambu counties to end the deadly shoot-out. Realizing that they had been outnumbered, the gang tried to escape.

Nairobi County Police Commander Japheth Koome has confirmed that the slain suspect is indeed Mwaniki.

Mwanii had managed to elude many police traps, his elusiveness being attributed to his access to insider information regarding impending arrests and is suspected to be behind many police deaths, most of whom he fell out with.

On how police established the whereabouts of Mwaniki, one of the detectives said they infiltrated the Gaza gang, which has about six surviving members on the run while the rest have died while confronting the police.

“It was not an easy task to get him. He has foot soldiers who would always alert him every time we would plan a raid,” the detective said.

Of his informers, he admitted some are police officers who benefitted from his proceeds of crime.

Early on Sunday, Mwaniki had called their supplier (a police informer ) of ammunition, asking for a delivery later in the afternoon.

“As soon as our informer alerted us about his hideout and that they were to meet that afternoon, we prepared a team and we had hoped that he will be arrested together with the rest of the criminals. But we went there cautiously since they were armed,” the detective revealed.

At around 2pm on Sunday, the informer accompanied by a team of armed police officers in plain clothes arrived at Mwaniki’s hideout in Thika where they met ‘face to face’.

"Mwaniki and one of his accomplices had gone to one of the residences to “smoke weed. They did not know who we were.”

But as shrewd as he was, Mwaniki smelt a rat; there were suspicious faces in his ‘kingdom.’
It is at that time, the detective narrated, that he removed his Ceska pistol and started firing at them.

“A fierce shootout ensued and in the process both were killed…the Gaza leader was dead,” he said.
The Ceska pistol serial number was A879675, belonging to the army. Police officers also recovered 21 rounds of ammunition. They might have stolen from an army officer…” the officer explained.

But in the house, there were six others gang members who were also armed with an AK-47, which they stole from two police officers they had killed two days before within the same area.
The six managed to escape and days later, police are still pursuing them.

“We have profiled them…we know their names and a little bit of their history,” he said.

Hours later after the raid and the killing of Mwaniki and his accomplice, the person police were relying on for intelligence, was also killed.

“He made a huge mistake…he went back to them without informing us at an unknown location but still within Thika. They brutally killed him,” the officer said.

The said informer had served a jail sentence before he was released. According to police, his colleagues tortured him before strangling him to death.

“Though he was not seen during the raid, they must have known that he was the one who spied on them."

Mwaniki hails from Kirinyaga County but was raised in Kayole, B3 area.
He went to Imara Primary School and later proceeded to Joy Valley Secondary School in the same area.

Police records show that he started as a petty thief engaging in muggings and snatching handbags before he graduated to bigger’ crimes.
His first assignment was to protect a tycoon’s land in Kayole together with another gang of 10.