Kitengela agent beats up woman over rent arrears

 

A housewife is nursing injuries in Kitengela after a house agency employee allegedly beat her up on Tuesday for failing to pay rent.

The 7pm incident occurred at Danco Apartments managed by an investment agency in the town.

Efforts to get comment from the investment agency did not bear fruit as no one picked our calls.

Pauline Achieng', while narrating her ordeal from Kitengela subcounty hospital, said the man she identified as the agent went to her house and demanded a balance of Sh13,000 being rent balances from April.

“I told him my husband had not come back from work and I did not have the money at the time. He again told me he wanted to lock the house and therefore I should walk out with my six-months-old baby so he could lock it,” Achieng' said.

She refused to walk out and insisted the man should sit in the house and wait for her husband.

“He attempted to pull me out of the house while my child was suckling. I held on to the door. When he failed to pull me out, he hit me on the head as he rained kicks on my waist and stomach,” Achieng' said.

She said she could only remember the last kick on her stomach that caused her to black out. She later came back to her senses at the government hospital at night.

Her husband, James Muturi, said he arrived home soon after the incident and hired a taxi to take his wife to hospital.

Muturi said when he arrived in the apartment the man who had beaten up his wife was still in the apartment. When he confronted him to explain what happened the man only said Achieng' first hit him on the face.

Neighbours who turned up immediately after the confrontation said they took the infant from the mother when she blacked out.

Muturi said they have lived in the apartment for the last five years and they have never failed to pay their house rent.

“The Sh13,000 they are asking for accrued when businesses went down following the Covid-19 outbreak in the country. I even paid them Sh4,000 last week,” Muturi said.