THE ARISTOCRAT heir to Kenya’s most famous white settler family was yesterday sentenced to a further eight months in jail for the manslaughter of a black poacher on his family’s estate.
Thomas Cholmondeley (40) has already spent three years in jail.
The judge, Muga Apondi, said he was giving a “light” punishment due to the time already served and because Cholmondeley had tried to help his victim, Robert Njoya, with first aid and transport to hospital. “The accused has been humbled by this process,” he said.
Last week, Apondi dropped the original murder charge but rejected Cholmondeley’s defence that he had not fired the shot that killed 37-year-old Njoya in 2006.
As the sentence was read out, some people in the public gallery waved placards, one reading “Butcher of Naivasha”.
It was the second time in just over a year that Cholmondeley, an Old Etonian and heir to the fifth Baron Delamere, was accused of killing a black man on the 19,000-hectare Soysambu ranch near Naivasha, 55 miles from Nairobi. The first case was abandoned, causing widespread anger.
Under Kenyan law, manslaughter carries a sentence of up to life in prison.
In a mitigation plea on Tuesday, the defence lawyer Fred Ojiambo said the Delamere family were willing to meet the “material and spiritual needs” of the Njoyas and called for a sentence “that allows the accused to participate in their welfare”.
Cholmondeley and his friend Carl Tundo had been looking for a site to build a house when they stumbled on a group of poachers. Cholmondeley initially told police he had accidentally shot Njoya, but later claimed Tundo had also had a gun and could have fired the fatal shot.
The flamboyant lifestyle of the original Lord Delamere and other wealthy white settlers from central Kenya's "Happy Valley" inspired a book and the 1987 film White Mischief. – (Guardian service, Reuters)