Daniel Kiptum Cheruiyot was a trader and a police reservist who turned his job to a criminal organisation.
Cheruiyot started hiring out his gun to carjackers around Eldoret and police became suspicious and he lost both his delegation as a reservist and the gun.
He later decided to extend his little criminal empire to Nairobi being involved mostly in carjacking and bank robberies.
He started introducing himself as a CID officer and everyone believed him including police officers after which he became chairman of the Imara Daima Estate Security Committee.
However, his undercover mission hit a snag when he shot a police officer who was a corporal in Ruiru called Brian Ogola.
[caption caption="Daniel Cheruiyot"]
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The second one was Charles Karue, a Flying Squad officer who was part of a team that had gone to arrest him in Imara Daima. Cheruiyot shot and killed him point blank and stole his AK 47 rifle.
As if this was not causing him enough heat with the security apparatus, the hardened criminal later shot police constable Maina Cheserem.
He was now a wanted man and at the top of the list in the crime watch division which was forced to mobilize itself and started thorough investigations against him.
A Sh100,000 bounty was placed on his head and he was now a wanted dead or alive man, forcing the search for Cheruiyot to extend to Uganda and Tanzania.
In an unbelievable mafia style, Cheruiyot phoned the control room at the police headquarters and issued a warning that he would keep killing officers one by one until they laid off.
However, time was already up for Cheruiyot after one of the informers reached out to the police and told them his hiding den. The informant not only disclosed his house but all the possible escape routes.
Police raided his hideout and Cheruiyot was heard claiming he wanted to surrender only for him to fire a shot at a police officer.
This angered the police who sent in a sharpshooter and within minutes, Daniel Cheruiyot Kiptum alias Frank was lying on the floor with a bullet in his head.
He was still breathing but the officers left him to bleed to death as they turned the sparsely furnished house over.
[caption caption="Police after gunning down a thug"]
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