A man accused of murdering his grandmother has been sentenced to ten years in jail.

Patrick Kigami Kitungi was accused of the heinous murder of Betty Minage.

Despite Kitungi's contrition and argument that he was not in the appropriate state of mind when he chopped his grandmother with an axe, the court decided he failed to present sufficient evidence to get a non-custodial sentence after pleading guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

PHOTO | COURTESY police line

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“At the time of entering the plea bargain agreement, he informed the court that he occasionally had mental issues. His case was that at the time he committed the offence, he was being attacked by imaginary people. Unfortunately, he did not adduce any documentation of his prior mental illness or that he was mentally unstable at the material time or that he was currently on treatment at Mbale Hospital,” said Justice Jacqueline Kamau.

“Having failed to discharge this burden, this court had no option but to treat him as a person who was aware of what he was doing at the material time. It is for that reason that this court found and held that the non-custodial sentence that the Probation Officer had recommended herein was not suitable.”

PHOTO | COURTESY man in cuffs

On the tragic day of April 8, 2018, Kitungi visited his grandmother's house before claiming to be under assault by invisible powers, resulting in a violent struggle that killed Minage.

A postmortem investigation conducted on April 16, 2018, determined that the cause of death was "intracranial haemorrhage secondary to trauma."