Cop shoots dead lawmaker in Kenya

An opposition lawmaker was gunned down by a police officer on Thursday...

An opposition lawmaker was gunned down by a police officer on Thursday in the second fatal shooting of an opposition legislator this week amid ethnic fighting sparked by Kenya’s disputed presidential election, officials said.

Kenya’s national police chief Hussein Ali said the police officer, who has been arrested, shot David Too in a dispute over the officer’s girlfriend. The opposition said it was an assassination plot.

Henry Kosgie, an official of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, told a news conference that witnesses had reported seeing Too shot as he traveled by car from Nairobi to the western city of Eldoret.

Angry residents of Eldoret marched on the police station after the shooting but ran away as paramilitary officers fired into the air.

Within minutes of the news reaching the western town of Kisumu, an opposition stronghold, gangs of men armed themselves with machetes and set up burning barricades. Businesses shut down and workers began to flee from the town center.

The killing came as negotiators began the first day of talks to resolve the country’s deadly election dispute, and the head of the African Union warned the country was turning to ethnic cleansing, and even genocide.

Opposition party secretary-general Anyang Nyongo said it was “part of an evil scheme” to kill legislators and rob the opposition of its majority in parliament.

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An Associated Press reporter saw Too’s body at a hospital in Eldoret, where Deputy Police Chief Gabriel Kuya said the traffic officer had discovered that his girlfriend was having an affair with Too, and chased the two on his motorcycle when he saw them together in a car.

“He drove toward the side of the woman and shot her in the stomach twice. Her partner (legislator Too) pleaded with the officer not to kill her but he turned his pistol on him instead, hitting him four times in the head,” Kuya said.

At an African Union summit in neighboring Ethiopia, chairman Alpha Konare said, “Kenya is a country that was /a hope for the continent. Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing, We are even talking about genocide. We cannot sit with our hands folded.”