By Tim Binnall
The already odd case of the biting bandit menacing a village in Kenya has taken a peculiar turn as residents of a separate community captured an individual who had also been roaming the streets chomping on unfortunate individuals, and some wonder if the two miscreants are one and the same. Earlier this week, people living in the town of Ruiru revealed that they were afraid to leave their homes at night due to a ne'er-do-well they had come to call 'the vampire.' The man had earned the monstrous moniker by way of his penchant for biting his victims if they resisted being robbed. While police investigated the ongoing situation, word later emerged from another Kenyan community that the bizarre bandit may have been caught.
According to a local media report, the village of Gikoe has also recently been gripped by similar instances of a man biting people. Unlike their counterparts in Ruiru, residents did not wait for authorities to intervene; instead, they formed a posse and tracked down the toothy troublemaker. After beating him senseless, the mob tied the man up and turned him over to police. Although the Gikoe vampire did not rob his victims, the similarities between the two cases have understandably led to speculation that the captured creep could be Ruiru's biting bandit. Presumably, police are working with those who encountered the crook to see if his appearance matches that of the captured man.
That said, a factor working against the theory is that the communities are fairly far apart, requiring a two-and-a-half hour drive from one to the other. That said, if the biting bandit felt that the proverbial heat had gotten to be too much for him in Ruiru, it is entirely possible that he trekked to Gikoe to continue his crime spree and wound up messing with the wrong community. Perhaps the more worrisome scenario is that the captured man is not the biting bandit, since that would mean there were two 'vampires' running around Kenya causing trouble, with one still very much on the loose and likely looking for his next victim.