Prime suspect in Abel Katende’s death on the run- police

Killed: Abel Katende. COURTESY PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • The children were reportedly experiencing some challenges in their relationships when Katende was killed.
  • Katende reportedly relocated to Masulita in 2016 after his wife and children forced him out of their family home in Lutete in Kasangati in Wakiso District.

Police are hunting for 19-year-old woman in connection to the death of her father, Abel Katende, a former sales executive at Daily Monitor. The suspect is said to have hit her father with the hoe handle on the head and left him to bleed to death.

She was implicated in a confession statement made by her 17-year-old brother (name withheld). The boy reportedly helped his sister (fugitive) to transport their father's body. In his confession, the teenager explains that on April 27, 2018, he together with his sister, another suspect and their mother went to Masuulita to visit their father, pick some food from the garden and drive back to Kasangati, Wakiso District.
Katende reportedly relocated to Masulita in 2016 after his wife and children forced him out of their family home in Lutete in Kasangati in Wakiso District. According to the teenager, when they arrived in Masulita they cooked and ate together. He explains that when it was time to leave, he went out with his father to pack food stuff from the garden into the car.

"After a few minutes, she (fugitive) called daddy back into the house that she wanted to tell him something and once he entered, she hit him on the head with the wooden part of the hoe, which she was holding," reads the teenage boy’s statement in part.

He added: "I ran into the house and daddy was lying in a pool of blood."
The children then put Katende's body in a sack, bundled it on their double cabin truck and reportedly forced the 17- year- old who was still in shock to drive up to Lutete in Kasangati. The family allegedly agreed that whoever asked about Katende would be told that they he was at Masulita trading centre.
They called in someone in the wee hours of the next day, who helped them to widen the hole of their pit latrine where they pushed the deceased's body. The man was called back the next day and given money to buy three kilogrammes of cement, which he used to construct a slab on the pit latrine.

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On Tuesday this week, one of the suspects also decided to cooperate with police and gave her confession statement. She told police detectives that contrary to what people were saying, there was no land feud between her and Katende.

She told police that the only problem she had with the deceased was that he was causing her children bad omen, something that she told her children and they decided to get rid of him.

The children were reportedly experiencing some challenges in their relationships when Katende was killed.
It’s reported that two of Katende’s daughters had just broken up with their boyfriends and when their mother visited a witchdoctor, she was told their woes were caused by her ex-husband who had bad omen.

Herbert Muhangi, who has been the commandant of Flying Squad confirmed that they had gotten confession statements and that they were searching for the prime suspect in the murder.

"The investigations are almost over. Right now we are trailing the fugitive and she will soon be in custody," Muhangi said before his transfer message was released.
Police are currently holding Katende's estranged wife, her daughter and brother at Kampala Central Police station on tentative charges of murder.