A Kenyan police officer Constable Reuben Kimutai Lel woke up from a nine-month coma last week, only to find he had been sacked for desertion.
The police force had no idea where the officer had been.
His niece Joan Jeptoo told the BBC the police thought her uncle was dead.
But it turns out that the officer had been the victim of a road accident and had been in one of the country’s biggest hospitals all along. He only regained consciousness last week.
Jeptoo also said of the family’s horror as they searched for Lel’s body in morgues after they had given up on his chances of being alive.
At one point they almost collected a decomposing body from a morgue that was said to be him.
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“We thought he was dead because his phone was off. Early this year we went to collect a body that we were told resembled him, but the fingerprints didn’t match,” she said.
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Lel was admitted on 21 December 2020 as an unknown person at the main referral hospital in the capital, Nairobi. He had no identity documents with him.
Meanwhile, he was sacked from his job, charged in absentia with desertion and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The case was later withdrawn after the police failed to find him.
He regained consciousness last week, and although he has still not regained his full memory, he was able to identify himself by name and that he was a police officer – and so the search for his relatives began.
His niece was contacted by the police last Wednesday and was told to go and identify him at hospital.
“I found him at Kenyatta National Hospital. He could not recognise me and he could not recognise the names of members of his family,” she said.
The police officer was discharged from hospital last Friday and is recuperating at his home in Koibatek, Baringo county, under the care of his wife and family.
According to Kenya news site Daily Nation, arrangements are being made to reinstate him to the police force.
However, his niece said Lel, who is in his late 50s, was looking forward to his retirement.
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