For five days, residents of Kiruga village in Nyeri County had been searching for their missing community member everywhere except in the water tank they had been drinking from.

Fourty-seven-year-old Sarah Wairuri was found inside her 2,500-litre water tank beside her three-roomed house on the evening of Thursday, January 18.

Speaking to the Nation, the deceased’s cousin Beth Wambui on Monday said her relative was last seen on the morning of Saturday, January 13, at a nearby shopping centre.

“She had woken up at around 9am and gone to visit her twin sister and on her way back, she passed by a neighbour’s house and took breakfast before leaving for Wangechu shopping centre a few metres away,” said Wambui, adding that the deceased was suffering from a mental illness and had been on medication.

On the fateful day, Wambui says the deceased had broken her norm, since she would normally prepare breakfast for her at her home — about 100 metres away.

She said she would ensure that the patient took the meal together with her medicine.

At her home, the deceased, a single mother of eight, lived with her daughter and her grandchild.

The daughter, in her mid-20s, took care of her mother with the help of family members who live on their subdivided ancestral property.

“Her daughter would leave for Othaya town every day for work from 9am to 6pm and leave her under our care,” explained Wambui, adding that the deceased would at such times go visiting her friends or even attend ceremonies in the village where she would help with menial work.

The deceased did not have any source of income and was fully dependent on her family and the goodwill of fellow villagers.

However, at her home, neighbours trooped in to fetch water from her water tank built and given to her by Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga in 2018, after her poverty status was brought to the attention of the county government.

In the initiative by the county government and an NGO, My Brother’s Keeper Foundation, the deceased received clean piped water, foodstuff and a three-roomed house.

“She received the support after her photos were circulated on social media showing her deplorable state of living-  a muddy house, in which she inherited from her late mother,” said Wambui.

The county government also stepped in to support her by sponsoring her children through education.

At the home, the deceased lived on an eighth-acre property inherited from her mother after she separated from her first husband more than 20 years ago.

Her water tank would provide water to four neighbouring households and a nearby local church.

According to Wambui, the deceased’s generous nature saw her provide free water to neighbours who could not afford piped water and only depended on rainwater.

But even this did not make the line of villagers who trooped in to fetch water daily from her compound suspicious of its nature.

“It was only after five days that my 15-year-old daughter came complaining to me in the evening that the compound had a foul smell and the water fetched from the tank had a lot of foam,” she said.

On peeping into the water tank, the deceased’s clothes were seen floating. Ms Wairuri’s body was later retrieved from the tank swollen and having turned white.

Othaya Deputy sub-County Police Commander Safari Katana said a police report filed by the family shows that a stool was found beside the tank.

“The daughter reported that on the day she went missing, she found a stool beside the tank that evening and moved it away not knowing that her mother had fallen inside the tank,” said Mr Katana.

Currently, the family is questioning how the deceased died, noting that because of her body size and the small opening of the tank, she could not fall into the tank without being pushed.

“For her body to be retrieved, the police also had to cut the tank,” said a family member.

Before the incident, the family member also noted that the deceased’s only dairy goat, also donated to her by the governor, had been stolen from her home over the December festivities. The police are yet to make any arrests.

While condoling with the family through a Facebook post on Sunday, Mr Kahiga asked the police to thoroughly investigate the matter, noting that the circumstances surrounding the death raised serious questions.