GABRIELLA MAINA, HEADMISTRESS OF HILLCREST PREP MURDERED

The headmistress of Hillcrest Preparatory School was shot dead in broad daylight yesterday whilst walking in the Karen area of Nairobi.

Gabriella Maina from Australia was reportedly walking along the road (reports differ as to whether it was Miotoni Road or Warai Road) having just taken her daughter to visit a friend nearby when she was accosted by two men on a boda boda who demanded she give them her mobile phone. The police say Ms Maina refused to hand it over whereupon she was shot in the head and the two attackers escaped having taken the phone.

TRAGIC MURDER BARELY REPORTED

If you search this story you will find it on the Internet as reported in the Australian and British media. The tragic and disturbing news of Gabriella Maina’s murder however, barely received a mention in the Kenyan media, just a very small report in the ‘In Brief’ section on page 22 of today’s Standard, where she was just referred to as ‘an Australian women’.

Ms Maina was well liked and respected at Hillcrest where she taught English, Drama and Italian and had lived in Nairobi since September 2015.

The most disturbing aspect to this story is of course that a woman and mother has been brutally killed. It also disturbing that anyone can just be gunned down on Nairobi’s streets all for the price of a mobile phone. But it is surely also of concern that the Kenyan media appear just not to care.