Family launches search for kidnapped University of Nairobi student

A family in Kisumu is looking for their 20-year-old daughter who was allegedly kidnapped Friday evening.

Mercy Awuor Gache is said to have been kidnapped while heading home from the Kisumu campus of the University of Nairobi.

Her father, George Gache showed Citizen TV the last text message his daughter had written to her mother on Friday saying she had finished attending lectures and was on her way home.

In distress the father said: “As usual, Mercy texted her mother at 7:56pm saying she was on her way. When I got home at around 9pm, she had not yet arrived and did not answer her phone.”

It was later that a pastor at Covenant of Peace Church in Kisumu received a call from a man using Mercy’s phone saying they had kidnapped her.

‘’Later, a man called using her phone and said they were with my girl. They said they kidnapped her when she was approaching the bus stage and they will communicate the next day before disconnecting the call.”

Attempts by the family to know if the kidnappers had any demands failed with the abductors switching off the phone only promising to call the next day.

“I want to ask anybody with information about my daughter to contact me or the police,” said Gache.

The family has pegged their hopes on the possibility that their daughter Mercy Awuor Gache will be rescued through the help of the public and the police.

Police have launched investigations into the incident.

Last month a family at Marindi in Homa Bay County was left in panic after unknown people kidnapped their three children.

Phoebe Akinyi, 11, Isaiah Ogwe Junior, 7, and Risper Ogwe, 3, were heading to their grandmother’s house a few meters from where their parents’ stay when unknown people abducted them and escaped.

The kidnappers issued an 18-hour ultimatum to Isaiah Ogwe’s family (beginning Saturday noon) to raise a ransom of Sh6 million.

The kidnappers’ phone was then switched off leaving the family in a state of confusion and despair.