asphyxiation - The African Mirror

May

03

2023

Kenya cult deaths: Church leader remains in jail

NEWS

A Kenyan cult leader accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves to death will be detained by police until a hearing on Friday, a court ruled as investigators searched for more bodies in a forest where 101 corpses have already been unearthed. Kenyan authorities say the dead were members of the Good News International Church led by Paul Mackenzie, 50, who had predicted the world would end on April 15 and ordered his followers to kill themselves to be the first to go to heaven. The death toll stands at a total of 109 so far, with 101, mostly children, found…

Kenya cult deaths: kids starved, asphyxiated

NEWS

THE bodies of several children exhumed in eastern Kenya showed signs of starvation and in some cases asphyxiation, a government pathologist said, as investigators began the first autopsies on over 100 people linked to a doomsday cult. On Monday investigators said they had completed 10 autopsies, comprising nine children aged between 18 months and 10 years, and one female adult, from the 101 bodies discovered last month in shallow graves in Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County. Authorities say the dead were followers of the Good News International Church, led by pastor Paul Mackenzie, whom they accuse of instructing worshippers to starve…

Kenyan LGBTQ activist was killed by asphyxiation, pathologist says

LGBTQIA+

KENYAN LGBTQ rights campaigner Edwin Chiloba, whose body was found in a metal box on the roadside near the city of Eldoret last week, died from suffocation caused by socks stuffed into his mouth, a pathologist said. "(He) died from asphyxia which is caused by smothering. We found that he had a piece of jeans trouser which was tied around the mouth, and around the nose," pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters. "There were socks which were stuffed in the mouth," Oduor said, adding that Chiloba showed no other signs of injury. Police believe Chiloba, a fashion model and designer, was…