‘Serial killer’ victim speaks out

Baker Walusimbi

KAMPALA- Eleven years since the arrest of alleged ‘serial killer’ Baker Walusimbi, Faith* [not real name], reveals how she was tormented by the man who has been battling murder, defilement, and robbery charges.

Walusimbi, who was arrested on January 21, 2006, following a joint operation by the police and the Violent Crime Crack Unit (VCCU), had in 2002 been accused of defilement. His bail application through senior criminal lawyer McDusman Kabega is to be determined tomorrow.

Remembering the ordeal
In an exclusive interview with Daily Monitor on Friday, Faith, who still recalls the torments she went through from Walusimbi on December 18, 2005, says she will now be punished twice when Walusimbi is granted bail.

“You are now reminding me of a man I had erased out of my mind because he has been out of circulation. If you talk of a possibility to grant him bail, I recall all I went through the day he kidnapped me and two other ladies,” Faith, now 33 years old, said.

Reliving her ordeal on December 18, 2005, Faith, a then First Year evening student at Kyambogo University, says she left campus at around 9.30pm, boarded a taxi which dropped her off at Nakawa stage.

She joined two other ladies; one of whom was a fellow student at Kyambogo as they waited for a taxi to take them to Kampala city centre, where each of them would head to their respective destinations.

“As the three of us were waiting for a taxi, there came I think a Toyota corona whose occupant offered us a lift. He drove us to town and followed Nasser Road heading for Entebbe road. He was asking each one of our destinations and what we were doing. I told him I was heading to Salaama and one lady said she was going to Nateete,” recalls Faith.

Upon reaching Nasser Road, she narrates that Walusimbi asked them whether they had ever heard of a notorious robber and rapist called Baker Walusimbi and when each of them denied, he introduced himself as one, sending chills down their spines.

“I was seated on the co-driver’s seat and it was heavily raining. We reached Shoprite [supermarket] and the Nateete girl told him she wanted to disembark, but Walusimbi did not stop and instead drove on towards Ggaba Road,” Nantongo narrates.

When they reached the Mukwano-Ggaba road junction traffic lights, Walusimbi warned that each of them would get a punishment from him for boarding strangers’ vehicles.

“I kept quiet as the other two women were screaming on top of their voices; which forced Walusimbi to point a pistol and a knife at them and they all shut up. I opened one of my bags and got a cloth and started helping him clean the windscreens because the rain was heavy and he was driving at a slow speed,” Faith recalls.

She adds that when they reached Kabalagala, they pleaded with Walusimbi to have mercy on them and drop them off but he adamantly refused.

The robbery
And when they reached Bbunga, Walusimbi stopped and ordered one lady to remove whatever she had, including the shoes and mobile phone and get out of the vehicle, to which she obliged while trembling.

“After the Cape junction, Walusimbi branched off the main road and took the marrum road, which was slippery, forcing him to re-join the main road. As it was still raining, we reached a junction and he asked me whether I knew the place. I said I didn’t and he told me this is Mr Gordon Wavamunno’s residence,” she says.

“He drove off and stopped at Mr Sudhir’s place which was undeveloped then and ordered me to leave whatever I had and I removed everything, including my new Nokia phone, which I had bought at Shs200,000 three days before. I removed my shoes, rings and ear rings, the two bags I had with its contents, including my money for transport and my spectacles and he stabbed my right arm before ordering me to get out and walk on without looking behind,” she adds.

Quaking, Faith said she moved out in the rain and stopped in a puddle beside the road and heard a gunshot, which was followed with Walusimbi’s vehicle speeding off at a terrific speed.

“This was around midnight and thanking my ancestors, I ran towards Salaama Road and when I reached a pitch opposite a church, I met people who had heard the gunshot and asked why I was running. I explained and one boda boda cyclist offered to take me to our residence, which was on Badongo Road and my late mother gave him Shs5,000 and thanked him for saving my life. I don’t know what happened to the third girl who I left in the vehicle,” Faith, now a mother of two, narrates.

Walusimbi arrested
She says three days later, their neighbour; a one Jjuuko working with JATT, told her Walusimbi had been arrested and was detained at VCCU in Kireka.

“Jjuuko took me there and I managed to recognise Walusimbi, who also said he still recognised me. He told the security officials that he remembers my Nokia phone and other items but were taken by his colleague in Masaka. He also told them that he had returned my spectacles and my school bag to me. I went back home and gave up everything,” she goes on.

DPP's take

Whatever happens tomorrow, will depend on trial judge Yasin Nyanzi’s interpretation but when Daily Monitor on Friday contacted the DPP spokesperson, Ms Jane Okua Kajuga, she said in case of the assessors’ disappearance without giving their opinion, court cannot proceed to give a verdict. “…even during the trial, court cannot change the assessors.

Once they vanish for good, then the only option can be a retrial, “Ms Kajuga said.
She said she knows Walusimbi as a person with quite a number of cases, but she could not comment about his murder file.