Kenyan cannibal suspect facing more charges

2012-06-15 09:01

Alexander Kinyua (AP)

Baltimore - A Kenyan cannibalism suspect faces an attempted murder charge in a different attack at a Baltimore university dorm.

Alexander Kinyua, 21, already faced assault and reckless endangerment charges in the May attack at Morgan State University.

But a Baltimore grand jury on Thursday indicted him on the more serious charges of first- and second-degree attempted murder, first- and second-degree assault and a weapons offence. The state's attorney's office declined to comment on the indictment.

Joshua Ceasar said Kinyua hit him over the head with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and chains as he walked into Kinyua's campus apartment, knocking him out.

Ate brain, heart

Friends who followed a blood trail from the door to a back room told Ceasar they discovered Kinyua standing over him with a knife.

Days later, Ceasar learned Kinyua had told the Harford County Sheriff's investigators that he used a knife to kill and carve up Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, 37, before eating his heart and brain.

Agyei-Kodie, a native of Ghana, had been staying at the Kinyua family's home for about six weeks when he disappeared May 25. Kinyua was charged with murder and assault in the killing.

Ceasar has said he believes Kinyua planned the same for him.

Attorney Richard Boucher, who represented Kinyua at a bail hearing in the assault, told the judge that Kinyua acted out of fear for his life when he hit Ceasar. Kinyua had told the attorney that Ceasar had told him he would have a gun the next time he saw him, he said.

‘Blood sacrifice’

Ceasar denies this. An attorney now representing Kinyua declined to comment on the indictment.

Some, including Ceasar and his attorney, have raised questions about whether the university should have looked more closely at Kinyua after a December outburst in a computer lab that led to his expulsion from the campus military reserve officer training programme and cryptic comments about "blood sacrifice" at a January university forum.

"In light of what happened to the second victim I think it's the appropriate charge," said Ceasar's attorney Steve Silverman, who is exploring a lawsuit and investigating whether the university could have done more before the attack.

School spokesperson Clinton Coleman has said the university is doing a "top-to-bottom" review, but so far it appears procedures were followed.

Two campus officers visited Kinyua after the December outburst and he was assessed by the counselling centre, Coleman said.

In early May, police received a report that a young man matching Kinyua's description had a machete, but found nothing when they searched him and his room.

- AP