'Police officer demanded Ksh.10K bribe,' Ian Njoroge’s mother opens up on his arrest

Ruth Nyambura Mbagara, the mother of the 19-year-old boy caught in a viral video assaulting a traffic police officer, has come out to apologise for his actions while also defending him.

According to Ms. Mbagara, the scuffle began as her son – Ian Njoroge – was rushing home to return her car and take his siblings to church as he has always done as a first-born son.

While admitting that Njoroge made an illegal U-turn, Ms. Mbagara went ahead to state that the officer demanded a Ksh.10,000 bribe but the boy was unable to raise such an amount since he’s just a university student.

The boy, however, said he could try to raise Ksh.5,000 through his friends but the officer was having none of it, thereby agitating him further and leading to the physical confrontation that ensued and which was captured on camera.

“I was surprised because I have brought my son in a Christian way. He is a boy who has gone to good schools, has grown with manners, is God-fearing, obedient, very polite at home…I have never seen him agitated. Something must have happened to that boy,” Ms. Mbagara told The Standard.

“I asked him why, he told me he wanted to bring the car back home before the time for going to church, and on his way he met the policeman. It’s true he made a U-turn, the policeman said he wanted Ksh.10,000, and he told him he couldn’t raise that because he’s a student and that was his mother’s car. He told him he could raise Ksh.5,000, but the policeman refused.”

She stated that she was only made aware of the incident when she went back home that fateful evening and found police cars at her gate.

When she went inside the house, Ms. Mbagara noted, she found police officers physically manhandling her son.

Ms Mbagara acknowledged the wrong committed by her son in assaulting the officer, but also shut down reports in some sections of the media that Njoroge

“I was heartbroken when I came home from a business trip that night and all I saw was Flying Squad cars outside my gate. In shock, I went inside and found policemen folding my boy down and when I asked why, they showed me a video and told me your boy is a murderer and a robber, that he wanted to kill that man…that the man was in the ICU because of what he (Ian) did,” she recalled.

“I’m speaking as a mother who has been hurting because of seeing how the boy has trended in a negative way. I want to apologise, first of all, and say what he did was not right; he was not supposed to beat that man, I already told him that was wrong.”