Kenyan girl jailed for 2017 school fires that killed 10 of her peers

An 18-year-old Kenyan girl has been jailed five years for starting a school dormitory fire that killed ten of her schoolmates in Kenya.

The girl committed the offence when she was 14 years old in 2017 while in her first year at Moi Girls Secondary School in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The student was found guilty of manslaughter in December 2021 after the court acquitted her of murder.

Parents of the victims are not happy with the leniency of the sentence but are happy about justice being served after all these years.

“She was only 14 when she met her death and life stopped for me, for her siblings and my entire family. Nothing seems to bridge the gap that she left,” a mother told BBC about how the death of her child changed her life.

According to BBC Africa Live Page, the judge who presided over the case ruled that the student started the fire so she could be transferred to another school.

She had also attempted to take her own life twice before the arson, the court heard.

School fires happen to be on the rise in Kenya forcing the government to issue stern caution to perpetrators with sanctions including being locked out of the formal education system.