Boy stole fish to feed brother who is HIV positive

By Wainaina Ndung’u

A Nyeri court has placed sanctions on two underage brothers who admitted to harvesting fish from a neighbour’s pond ostensibly to provide a special diet for one of them who is HIV-positive.

And the Probation and Children’s Office blamed the two boys’ behaviour on their "irresponsible and perennially drunk" father — a guard by night and Jua Kali artisan by day.

"They started their delinquent behaviour when their mother died since there was no one to monitor them," wrote a children’s officer.

Nyeri Senior Resident Magistrate Joan Wambiliyanga sent the elder brother, 15, for a three-year stint at the Shimo La Tewa Borstal Institution — a jail for boys nearing adult age — while she ruled that the sick brother, aged 13, to be held by the Children’s Department until a proper children’s home was found.

Hunger

The brothers and a neighbour, Christine Wangechi Mureithi, 23, admitted fishing in Mr Mureithi Muthui’s pond in Kamakwa village on March 12. The court was told the older boy had blamed his actions on hunger and argued that he would not have stolen were it not for his sibling’s condition that required "proper feeding before taking drugs."

The complainant said neighbours informed him that the two boys were harvesting his fish at midnight and nabbed them at the pond with their catch. He said he took them to the assistant chief where the two volunteered information about more fish at Ms Wangechi’s rented room nearby.

The value of the stolen fish was Sh24,000. "They took the complainant and the chief to Christine’s house where more fish was recovered.

They also produced a cloth belonging to her which they had used to harvest the fish," Inspector Bernard Wamalwa told the court.

Ms Wambiliyanga, who called for Probation and Children’s officers’ reports before sentencing the three took issue with Wangechi, who is a single mother, for encouraging the two brothers to steal.

Being an adult, she was supposed to guide the two subjects rather than assist them commit the offence," said the magistrate.

Wangechi was fined Sh30,000 or serve four months in prison.

Neighbour

This was despite the woman’s protestations that she only helped prepare the fish as a concerned neighbour without knowing it was stolen.

But the magistrate observed that the two brothers had admitted that she gave them her lesso, which they used as a harvesting net and that a day earlier, she had helped them prepare another two fish they had stolen from the same pond.

The magistrate agreed with the children’s officer that there was need to separate the two boys to end the negative influence.