Photos: Police gun down husband of slain "Nairobi's prettiest thug"

Months after his wife and partner in crime met her death in the hands of the police, notorious thug Mwaniki aka Mwanii Sparta has been gunned down.

Mwanii, one of the most wanted criminals in Nairobi, was killed by police last weekend at Witeithie Estate in Juja. Mwanii’s wife, Claire Mwaniki, who was christened “Nairobi’s prettiest thug” was shot dead last May in Kayole after a shootout with the police.

They had a son together. See the report: here According to senior officers in Kayole, Mwaniki was callous while executing his evil schemes. Until his death, he was the leader of Gaza, a ruthless criminal gang whose ideology is cult-like and draws inspiration from a jailed Jamaican artist Vybz Kartel, who is serving a life sentence for killing his associate, the police said.

Besides being ruthless, Mwaniki is said to have been crafty and would be quick to eliminate a competitor or anyone he suspected was spying for the authorities.

“Mwaniki at one point killed two colleagues for befriending his wife Claire, who has since been killed,” a senior officer who did not want to be named told the Capital FM News investigative team. Mwaniki, who was with four other people at the time of the ambush, was shot dead after engaging police in a two-hour gun battle.

The rest of the gangsters managed to get away. Police reinforcements were called in from Nairobi and Kiambu counties to end the deadly shoot-out.

Realizing that they had been outnumbered, the gang tried to escape. Nairobi County Police Commander Japheth Koome has confirmed that the slain suspect is indeed Mwaniki. Mwanii had managed to elude many police traps, his elusiveness being attributed to his access to insider information regarding impending arrests and is suspected to be behind many police deaths, most of whom he fell out with. On how police established the whereabouts of Mwaniki, one of the detectives said they infiltrated the Gaza gang, which has about six surviving members on the run while the rest have died while confronting the police. “It was not an easy task to get him.

He has foot soldiers who would always alert him every time we would plan a raid,” the detective said. Of his informers, he admitted some are police officers who benefitted from his proceeds of crime. Early on Sunday, Mwaniki had called their supplier (a police informer ) of ammunition, asking for a delivery later in the afternoon. “As soon as our informer alerted us about his hideout and that they were to meet that afternoon, we prepared a team and we had hoped that he will be arrested together with the rest of the criminals. But we went there cautiously since they were armed,” the detective revealed.