Makerere student dies of suspected poisoning after kidnap

A criminal gang kidnapped a Makerere University student after his relatives failed to pay a Shs400,000 ransom. He later died after suffering paralysis due to suspected poisoning.
Simon Ashaba Faith, 22, was a third-year student of Social Sciences and resident of Nkrumah Hall. The assailants kidnapped him from the university on November 28.
Ashaba’s captors later used his phone to call his sister, Ms Brendah Nayebare, also a student at Makerere, to demand a ransom.
“Someone called our sister using his number. We agreed to meet them in Wandegeya on November 29 but they did not show up. They instead called and told us that his iPhone would stand for him,” Ashaba’s elder brother, Mr Samson Drones Rugongeza, said.
The family reported a case of kidnap at Makerere University Police Post.
Mr Rugongeza said the captors later called the family and told them if they wanted to get Ashaba, they should find him in Luzira on a road to Butabika hospital, before warning the family not to call again.
Mr Rugongeza said the family found Ashaba unconscious and saying uncoordinated things.
“When we found him, we first took him to Butabika before transferring him to Kibuli hospital. At Kibuli, doctors scanned his brain to establish why he was not speaking but found nothing,” Mr Rugongeza recounted.
In the first two weeks of his admission to Kibuli hospital, Ashaba remained unconscious.
“In the third week, he got paralysed, he would not change or turn on the bed,” Mr Rugongeza narrated events leading to his brother’s death on Christmas Day.
He said doctors suspect Ashaba was poisoned and the substance kept affecting his body parts systematically until he died. Ashaba was buried in Buyanja, Rukungiri District on December 27.
Mr Rugongeza suspects the kidnappers were Ashaba’s friends.
“If they were not friends how could they have called our sister who is at the university? They did not call mum or daddy but the person who was close by at Makerere,” Mr Rugongeza said.
Ashaba was a son of Mr Simon Rungongeza and Ms Florence Twongire.
Authorities’ say

Daily Monitor could not reach the University Dean of Students, Mr Cyriaco Kabagambe, for a comment on the death as calls to his phone contact provided by the university spokesperson went unanswered. Kampala Metropolitan police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire said: “As police, we are not aware of that case of murder.”