I just found myself having cut him – Man who killed 8-year-old brother sentenced to 30 years

A heartbreaking case of sibling violence came to a legal close last week when the Court of Appeal upheld a 30-year prison sentence for Peter Wambua Musyoka, found guilty of brutally killing his 8-year-old brother, Mwatu Mutiso, with a panga in a Magarini forest nearly nine years ago.

Delivering judgment on July 18, Justices Agnes Murgor, Dr Kibaya Imaana Laibuta, and Ngenye-Macharia dismissed Musyoka’s appeal, finding overwhelming evidence that he had deliberately inflicted a fatal cut on the back of his younger brother’s head.

The panga blow exposed brain matter and led to instant collapse, according to a post-mortem report presented during trial.

The killing occurred on September 19, 2016, in Chagoto Village, Adu Sub-location, Kilifi County.

The motive remains unclear, but the emotional impact on the family has been profound.

In court, their mother, Rose Martha Musyoka, had pleaded for leniency, saying she had “already lost one son” and did not want to lose another.

But the Court of Appeal ruled that the gravity of the crime outweighed those sentiments.

“Imposing a non-custodial sentence would be a pat on his back,” the judges said.

“The appellant did not front any single justification for brutally murdering his little brother who hoped to live to see many more years.”

The court agreed with the High Court’s conclusion that Musyoka, who was 22 at the time, acted with malice aforethought, a critical requirement for a murder conviction in Kenya.

_{"Peter has killed him"}

The most damning evidence came from Muema Mutiso, another brother who arrived moments after the fatal blow.

He testified that he heard Mwatu crying and rushed to find him bleeding and helpless on a forest path.

“I heard the deceased screaming. It was on a path. Mwatu was crying. Mwatu told me that he has been killed. I asked him who had cut him. He told me it was Peter,” Muema said.

That statement, given moments before Mwatu lost consciousness, was treated as a dying declaration under law and accepted by the court.

Musyoka’s defense challenged the admissibility of the statement, arguing that the deceased was too young to be considered a competent declarant.

But the appellate court rejected that claim, stating that an 8-year-old child “is possessed of sufficient intelligence to know who his siblings are” and would not make such an allegation without cause.

DNA and the disappearing brother

Musyoka had denied killing the boy, claiming he learned of his brother’s death only after returning home from the forest. However, his grandfather, Musyoka Mulu, offered a different account.

The elder man testified that they had gone to the forest together to burn charcoal.

He left Musyoka briefly to relieve himself, and when he returned, his grandson had disappeared.

That evening, the community learned of the child’s killing.

The next day, villagers found a bloodied panga and a pair of green shorts near the scene. DNA testing confirmed the blood on both matched the deceased.

The prosecution also revealed that Musyoka was found hiding at his grandfather’s home later that night.

When asked what had happened, witnesses said he confessed: “I just realised that I had cut Mwatu.”

The appellate judges considered this confession, the forensic evidence, and the dying declaration to be “a chain so complete that there is no escape from the conclusion” that Musyoka was the killer.

"No grudge between us"

During trial, Musyoka maintained that he had no quarrel with the deceased. “There was no grudge between me and the deceased that would have prompted me to kill him,” he said in his sworn statement.

Even his mother, Rose, said she had no issues with her son and wished the court would spare him a long prison sentence. But the judges dismissed this as an insufficient ground for leniency.

“The sentence must serve the objectives of, inter alia, deterrence, retribution and denunciation,” they ruled, citing the Judiciary’s Sentencing Policy Guidelines.

However, the court did partially revise the sentence to account for time served.

Musyoka was arrested in 2016 and remained in remand for over three and a half years before being sentenced in 2020.

That period will now be deducted from his 30-year term, meaning he will serve approximately 26 years and 6 months from the date of sentencing.

A family torn

The ruling ends a legal journey that began almost a decade ago, but the scars on the family are far from healed. What should have been a normal day in the forest turned into a lifetime of grief and regret.

“This is a murder case that involved siblings,” the court noted somberly. “It is unfortunate that the deceased’s life was cut short when he was only 8 years old.”

The tragedy has left a mother mourning one son and watching another spend decades behind bars. The judgment underscores the harsh realities of intra-family violence and the weight of justice in the face of unimaginable loss.