Shakahola Deaths Autopsy: Kids Were Strangled To Death
The postmortem exercise enters day four and autopsies on corpses found in mass graves linked to Pastor Mackenzie suspected of inciting followers to fast to death confirm that most of the victims especially children were strangled to death.
A Team of pathologists carrying out the post-mortems on more than 100 bodies unearthed in Shakahola forest examined 76 bodies by Wednesday.
The autopsies took place at Malindi Sub-county Hospital Mortuary.
Chief Government pathologist Johansen Oduor, when speaking to the media on Tuesday , said most of the children victims has some features of strangulation and asphyxiation.
”Out of the autopsies done, an 11 year old female kid was strangled to death -she had clear marks in the neck and her bones were broken ” Said Oduor.
He also said one child had trauma to the head and three of them had asphyxiated- meaning that they had been died for lack of oxygen probably due to suffocation.
Further the chief pathologist says,two other kids had undergone smothering -this happens when some one blocks your nose and mouth so that you are unable to breaths and you die .
“From what we are hearing, there was some indication that they were being smothered, which can be one of the causes of asphyxiation. It was in two children. ” he said.
“There were six which we were not able to ascertain the course of starvation because of the level of decomposition ,so it was very difficult for us to say what caused their death ”he added .
Pathologists were also able to take DNA from 27 relatives for purposes of identification .
They are expected to finish the process on Thursday and resume exhumation by next week.
Oduor also says most of the bodies were badly decomposed hence possing it as a challenge .
He however said all the organs were intact ,he confirmed this amid rumours of organ trafficking.
Oduor says the process has also had some challenges as some bodies had decomposed, making it difficult to estimate their time of death.
Dr Odour said the exercise was initially challenging as they had to set up X-ray machines for age estimation
The findings now point to a possible murder, especially of most of the children who are the majority of the victims of the cult activities led by Mackenzie.
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