Fourteen years. That is how long this case took.

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, the High Court sentenced former United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) student Duncan Livingstone Kimathi, 37, to death for the murder of his fellow student, Sarah Akello Aruwa, a final-year International Relations student, between 30 June and 1 July 2012 in the Kiamako area of Githunguri, Kiambu County.

Justice Kanyi Kimondo handed down the sentence after finding Kimathi guilty. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), which secured the conviction, confirmed the sentence in a statement on 29 October 2026.

Read the headline again, because timelines will get this wrong: a death sentence is not an execution. Kenya's courts still hand down death sentences, and the sentence, its legal status, and any appeal or review are matters of law — not something Campus Pulse will shorten into a single, misleading word.

What the court heard

The prosecution, led by Millicent Kigira, called 17 witnesses to prove its case, presenting evidence linking Kimathi to the abduction, ransom demands and killing of Aruwa.

According to court reporting by Citizen Digital, the Eastleigh Voice and Nairobi Law Monthly, Aruwa disappeared after telling a friend she was going to meet a man she had previously encountered at the university library. She had noted down in her notebook that she intended to meet a person identified as Daniel Muriithi, and had recorded a telephone number. The court established that Kimathi did not know Muriithi, and found that the identity had been used as part of a plan to lure her.

Her family later received calls demanding KSh 100,000 for her release. Her mother, Hellen Atieno Aruwa, told the court she negotiated the amount down to KSh 70,000 before reporting the matter at Kasarani Police Station. Her boyfriend also testified that a man answered her phone when he tried to reach her and demanded KSh 100,000.

Justice Kimondo found that the circumstances surrounding the abduction and killing demonstrated malice aforethought, concluding that Aruwa had been deliberately lured into a trap before she was killed. The court also heard that another accused person in the case fled after being released on bail, and the trial proceeded in her absence following court orders.

Campus Pulse is deliberately keeping the evidence summary at this level. Further detail from the trial — including items recovered during investigations and medical evidence — was reported in court coverage, but repeating it in full here would add graphic detail without adding understanding, and would risk turning a family's 14-year wait into spectacle.

Why 14 years matters for students today

Aruwa was a final-year student. She went to meet someone she believed she knew from the university library. That single, ordinary campus detail is the part of this story every student should sit with: the library, the corridor, the familiar face are not automatically safe, and meeting someone alone, on the basis of a name and a number, carries risks that no campus safety talk should gloss over.

If you are meeting someone new from campus, tell a friend where you are going, share a live location where you can, meet in a public place in daylight, and trust the unease if something feels off. Those are not guarantees. They are habits that give other people a chance to find you quickly if something goes wrong.

For Aruwa's family, this sentence closes a court case. It does not return a daughter, a sister, a classmate, or the graduation she should have had in 2012. That is why this article is not written as a victory lap.

What we could not verify

Whether any appeal will be filed, and the legal status and timing of any further proceedings, were not confirmed in the verified sources used for this draft. This article reports the sentence as handed down on 29 October 2026, and must be updated if an appeal or further court action is confirmed.

Sources