Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) based in Juja, Kiambu County, are hunting down three suspects who killed a 23-year-old university student in cold blood on Monday night.

The killers are said to have escaped with the victim’s mobile phone and other valuables.

DCI boss George Kinoti in statement on Tuesday evening said Joel Juma, a fourth year Industrial Chemistry student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), was stabbed two times on the chest by one of the thugs before they fled to darkness in the 2am incident.

According to Juma’s girlfriend who is a Law student at the Mt Kenya University, Parklands Campus, she had escorted her boyfriend to get some revision materials from his classmates a few blocks away, when the blood thirst gang accosted them.

The girlfriend had gone to visit his lover last evening at around 6pm and found him studying for his examinations. She prepared a meal that they shared together before they retired to bed.

However, Juma later woke up and embarked on his books but at 2am, he asked her to escort him to where a classmate lived a few blocks away, to get some reference material that he needed before morning.

It is while on their way when the thugs attacked them near hotel Lilies, demanding for money and mobile phones.

Two of them descended on Juma with blows and kicks before stabbing him twice on the left side of his chest, leaving him lying on the ground in a pool of blood.

The third assailant manhandled the lady who hadn’t carried any valuable and luckily, left her unscathed. Local guards who heard the commotion rushed to the scene and together with the heavily shaken girlfriend, helped Juma to a local dispensary where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Detectives have since established that pockets of a notorious gang, which escaped the ongoing operation to rid Kayole and Dandora of criminals, has found a safe haven in Gachororo, where they are regrouping with the aim of establishing a fiefdom.

Consequently, a major undercover operation to completely annihilate the gang has been launched in the area. Detectives from the Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau (CRIB) and the Special Service Unit (SSU) have been dispatched conduct the operation.