'I tried to save a dying poacher'
2006-09-27 15:55
Nairobi - A descendant of Kenya's most famous white settlers tried to save a black poacher he had shot on his vast estate, a court heard on Wednesday in a murder trial that had stirred racial tensions in this east African country.
Rally driver Jean Pierre Tundo, who was with wealthy landowner Thomas Cholmondeley, 38, at the time of the killing, gave evidence on the third day of the highly charged trial.
Educated at Eton, one of Britain's most exclusive schools, Cholmondeley faced the death penalty if convicted. He admitted to the killing, but said he acted in self-defence.
Tundo said: "Tom was over a man trying to tie a handkerchief around the wound, which was near the waist. Tom was also telling the man that things would be OK and that he will be taken to hospital."
Tundo, who was arrested with Cholmondeley at the time of the killing in May 2006, but later released, had been visiting Soysambu, the Delamere family's ranch to buy land.
Shooting charges dropped
He told the judge that he was standing about 15 metres away when he heard three to four gunshots and later Cholmondeley shouted that he had shot a man by mistake.
Cholmondeley called for Tundo to bring his car so they could take 37-year-old Robert Njoya to hospital. Tundo said Cholmondeley later carried the victim to the waiting car.
It was the second time in just more than a year that Cholmondeley had killed a black man on the family's sprawling farm in the Rift Valley - a region dubbed "Happy Valley" because of the decadent lifestyles of its colonial settlers.
Charges were dropped for shooting dead the game warden, prompting protests that Cholmondeley got special treatment.
Many Kenyans were resentful that much of the country's fertile lands remained in the hands of white settlers despite gaining independence in 1963.
White landowners 'felt threatened'
Some settlers, including Cholmondeley's family, kept their land and became Kenyan citizens.
White landowners in recent years had complained about increasing crime and said they felt threatened on their isolated holdings in Kenya's fertile plains.
In January, renowned British wildlife filmmaker Joan Root was fatally shot in her home in the Rift Valley.
Cholmondeley's grandfather was part of the hedonistic "Happy Valley" set of the 1940s.
The group of playboys and aristocrats, centred around the Muthaiga Country Club, outraged society with their promiscuous behaviour, which was exposed to a shocked British public in the 1941 murder trial of Sir Jock Delves Broughton.
He was acquitted of shooting the 22nd Earl of Erroll, who was having an affair with Delves Broughton's wife Diana. Broughton committed suicide in 1955 and his widow later married Cholmondeley's grandfather.
- AP