The Mt Kenya Times 
Justice Aggrey Muchelule
A Court of Appeal judge’s licensed Beretta pistol turns up in the hands of a robbery suspect shot dead by police, reviving questions about how service and personal firearms are tracked once they leave official custody
By MKT Reporter
A Court of Appeal judge has been drawn into a police investigation after his licensed firearm was recovered from a suspected armed robber killed in a shootout with detectives in Joska, Machakos County.
Justice Aggrey Muchelule told police he learned his Beretta pistol was missing only after officers informed him it had been recovered from the scene where a suspect, identified as Vincent Ochieng, was shot dead during a raid on Monday, July 13. The call prompted the judge to check his Kitisuru residence, where he believed the firearm was stored, and confirm it was gone.
In a statement recorded at Spring Valley Police Station, Muchelule said he rarely carried the pistol and had last physically confirmed it was in his possession in October 2025, when he intended to renew its firearm licence. He said he never completed the renewal, meaning the licence had since lapsed.
Detectives say the pistol had been used earlier in an armed robbery at Chaiiwali restaurant along General Mathenge Road in Spring Valley, Westlands, on July 4. Two masked gunmen entered the restaurant, robbed diners of mobile phones and a laptop, fired shots into the air and fled on a motorcycle. The attack was captured on CCTV and circulated widely online.
Ochieng was traced to a rented house in Joska, where he opened fire on detectives through a kitchen window after they identified themselves and ordered him to open the door. Officers returned fire, fatally wounding him. A woman and a child present in the house were unharmed.
At the scene, detectives recovered the Beretta pistol along with a magazine loaded with rounds of 9mm ammunition, additional live rounds, spent cartridges and three mobile phones. The firearm has been forwarded to the National Police Service Forensic Laboratory for ballistic analysis to determine whether it was used in other crimes. Investigators say Ochieng is linked to a series of robberies across Nairobi, Kiambu and Machakos counties, and a manhunt is under way for his accomplices.
The case has revived a familiar and uncomfortable question for many Kenyans: if a licensed firearm belonging to a serving judge can disappear unnoticed for months, how secure are the systems meant to track weapons once they leave official hands?
For ordinary citizens, the concern rarely stays confined to one case. It touches something broader — the assumption that firearms, whether issued to police officers or licensed to private individuals, are properly monitored, securely stored and accounted for. When a weapon surfaces months later at the scene of a violent crime, that assumption takes a visible knock.
The questions that follow are uncomfortable but necessary. How long had the pistol actually been missing before the judge realised it? Did it change hands once, or several times, before reaching Ochieng? Was there a gap in how the weapon was stored that allowed it to go unnoticed for the better part of a year? Investigators will need to establish this chain before any firm conclusions can be drawn.
There is, however, another side worth acknowledging. The pistol’s recovery — even under these circumstances — shows that police pursuit of the Westlands robbery suspects was active and ultimately effective. Every firearm taken out of criminal circulation is one fewer risk on the street, and the ballistic analysis now under way may help close out other unresolved cases linked to the same network.
Still, the broader lesson is hard to avoid. Whether a firearm belongs to a police officer or a private, licensed holder, its security cannot depend solely on the owner’s memory or diligence. Lapsed licences, unchecked storage and long gaps between physical verification all create room for weapons to move without anyone noticing until, as in this case, they turn up at a crime scene.
As the investigation into Justice Muchelule’s account and the ballistic examination of the recovered pistol continue, Kenyans will be watching for two things: how the weapon actually left his custody, and what, if anything, changes in how licensed firearms are tracked and audited going forward.
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