By Mulengera Reporters
Christopher Okello Onyum, a disgruntled 39-year-old man who on Thursday accessed the premises of Gaba Early Childhood Day Care Centre in Kampala’s Makindye Division, lived a perilous life and had sharp disagreements with his immediate family including his dad Asuman Onyum, a retired accountant.
According to Weekend Vision reporting, Onyum was in 2017 arrested and locked up at the Kwania Police facility in Lango sub region after killing his stepmother, Mzee Asuman’s other wife.
Yet ironically, there are no clear records to corroborate on the circumstances under which he was released and enabled to leave Uganda to go and live with his other siblings in Northern Virginia in the USA, where he even got enrolled into the job of being a caregiver in one of the elderly homes.
As of 2017, preliminary Police investigations into the Kwania incident had indicated that he had a mental disorder induced from a sickle cell condition.
Preliminary investigations are so far ruling out mental illness as part of the explanation into the Thursday events at the Gaba school because Christopher Onyum, who used to frequent a nearby internet cafe, had come around the Gaba Centre several times prior, ostensibly to perfect his plans. This surveying of the crime scene prior is indicative of the fact that this was a pre-meditated murder.
Having travelled by taxi to the school (that very Thursday) from the Kyanja apartment, where he had rented weeks earlier, Onyum stopped over in the Old Taxi Park where he bought the three sharp knives which he used to unleash terror on the four toddlers-Ryan Odeke, Keisha Otim, Gideon Oteko and Ignatius Sseruyange. They were aged between 1.5 and 2.5 years old, and now all of them are deceased.
Childless Onyum, who curiously first paid Shs180,000 as part payment for school fees for the child he claimed he was going to bring to be enrolled into the school, also bought and carried along two brand new big padlocks which he used to lock the school’s main entrance and another entrance leading to administration block.
All this preparatory work points to a well thought out motive as opposed to being mere random acts.
Last November, the same Onyum controversially returned to Uganda and originally didn’t disclose the news of his return from America to his father whose wish it was for his son to live and work there with his other siblings.
When they stumbled on each other at the old man’s Bunga home, Onyum told his dad that he disliked America and now preferred to return to Uganda to engage in farming on family land in Nwoya district, which is found in Acholi sub region.
His dad reluctantly drove him to Nwoya where a farm was established for him to fulfil his dream. The dad, who has his residence in Bunga, left him on the farm and returned to Kampala.
After a few weeks, Onyum abandoned the farming enterprise in Nwoya and sneaked back to Kampala in whose Kyanja neighbourhood he rented a residential house to live in. There is a possibility he could have been a victim of POTUS Donald Trump’s deportation policy targeting similarly-placed migrants.
Even after interacting with and recording statements from both Onyum and his dad, there is still a lot of work Police investigators have to do before clarity, as to the motive of the Thursday hacking, can be ascertained. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
