A man jumped from the 8th floor on Thursday, March 4, at the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company at Parklands Plaza, Nairobi.
Kevin Njagi, a staffer at the company, is said to have contacted his parents at around 8 am to tell them that he would commit suicide. Twenty minutes later, Njagi jumped off the building.
Njagi's colleagues suspect that he might have been depressed even though he rarely opened up on what he was going through.
"He was a good friend and I'm so shocked because I did not know he was going through something that could cost him his life," a source privy to the matter stated.
A police officer who spoke to Kenyans.co.ke in confidence confirmed the incident.
A similar incident took place in 2020 when a 40-year-old man identified as Richard Wangai jumped from the fifth floor of Adlife Plaza near Yaya Centre. Wangai committed suicide after he lost Ksh15 million to gambling.
WHO reports that 800,000 people commit suicide yearly worldwide with suicide singled out as the second leading cause of death among 15 to 29-year-olds.
While the real number of suicide cases are no accurately recorded in Kenya, the upsurge in the coverage of suicide-related deaths is an important indicator of the urgency with which resources ought to be deployed to reduce these otherwise preventable deaths.
Research has shown that structural determinants of mental ill-health such as extreme poverty, lack of access to empowerment opportunities and discrimination increase the likelihood of individuals committing suicide.
