Family members say the Kenyan who died in a protest against a US Ebola center was a teenager
This week, someone was killed during a protest in central Kenya against a quarantine facility for Americans who had been exposed to Ebola. His grandma said that the teen had left home to get a new school uniform.
In an interview with Reuters, Sylvester Muigai’s grandma said that police told her he was killed by tear gas instead of a bullet, which was different from what several witnesses and a protest leader said on the day he died, Tuesday.
Two Reuters reporters, who did not see Muigai’s death happen, saw a body lying still in a police van in Nanyuki, where the protest took place. The body had a big wound on the head.
Local police chief Daniel Kitavi said the person who died “was a rioter, I don’t know if he’s a student” when asked about it on Friday.
The U.S. Ebola facility makes people in Kentucky angry.
Many Kenyans are angry about the plan for the facility at the Laikipia Air Base, which is next to Nanyuki. There have been protests for several days.
A court told the proposed 50-bed unit to stop working, but U.S. and diplomatic sources, as well as flight tracking data, show that U.S. military planes have continued to bring in staff and equipment since the court’s orders. “We went to the police station yesterday and after being questioned for hours, they told us that it was tear gas that killed him and not a bullet,” Muigai’s grandmother Miriam Njoki told Reuters by phone.
She said Muigai went to Nanyuki’s Thingithu Secondary School and missed class because he was at the protest. He had left home to get a new uniform from his aunt’s house in Likii, a nearby neighborhood.
Protesters say the U.S. is leaving Ebola at risk.
People who are against the facility say that the U.S. is putting off taking care of people who were exposed to the Ebola spread in Uganda and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The government of U.S. President Donald Trump has said that it will not let any Ebola cases into the country. Americans who have been exposed to the virus but don’t have any signs can go to the Nanyuki facility. Kenyan officials said the building would also help Kenyans and people from other countries, but U.S. officials have not confirmed this.
A lot of protesters are also mad at Kenyan President William Ruto, who said last week that letting the U.S. build the center was “the right thing” for his government to do.
At least two more people have been killed, according to security sources, in the Nanyuki riots.
