Man held in murder of Nyeri seven-year-old-girl
Nicholas Macharia aka Machaa, who is suspected to have murdered seven-year-old Tamara Blessing.
What you need to know:
- In an affidavit presented to the court on Tuesday, investigating officer Wamburi Njogu requested continued detention of the suspect citing the need to conduct a postmortem on the child to determine the exact cause of death.
- “The investigating officer also requires time to subject the suspect to a mental assessment, conduct further interrogation, and establish whether he had any accomplices in the crime,” the affidavit stated.
Police in Nyeri have been allowed to detain a suspect in the murder of a seven-year-old girl for two more days pending a mental assessment to determine if he is fit to stand trial.
During a virtual court session on Tuesday, Senior Principal Magistrate Faith Munyi directed Nicholas Macharia to be taken to Nyeri County Referral Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Prosecution counsel Didmus Lang’at requested more time and sought a court order to facilitate the assessment, noting that most of the investigations were complete.
“So far, we have recorded witness statements, collected DNA samples, and retrieved raw CCTV footage showing the suspect with the deceased on the evening of May 24 when she went missing,” he said.
He added that the footage had been forwarded to the digital forensics laboratory in Nairobi for analysis.
Tamara Blessing went missing on Saturday, May 24, 2025, and her body was discovered two days later buried beneath a bed inside a timber house in the Witemere slums where Macharia lived.
Witness accounts indicated Tamara was last seen playing with a friend near the Nyeri police residence at around 6 pm just 200 metres from the market where her mother worked.
As the family searched for her, the suspect reportedly asked about her whereabouts.
CCTV footage from a nearby wholesale shop showed Tamara walking behind Macharia between 7pm and 8pm that evening.
Another camera, located 250 metres away in a business complex, captured the two walking toward the Witemere slums in Majengo.
A tea vendor later told investigators she had also seen Tamara with the suspect.
Tamara Blessing, a seven-year-old girl who had been missing from Nyeri town for four days, was found murdered.
After his arrest, Macharia led police to one of his timber houses claiming he wanted to prove Tamara was not there. Residents said the suspect lived alone and owned several structures in the area, some of which had been demolished before the search team located the one where Tamara’s body was found.
Inside the house, police found a bed, utensils, and under the bed a spade, machete, and hoe.
On May 27, Magistrate Munyi granted police permission to detain the suspect for 14 days to allow further investigations.
In an affidavit presented to the court on Tuesday, investigating officer Wamburi Njogu requested continued detention of the suspect citing the need to conduct a postmortem on the child to determine the exact cause of death.
“The investigating officer also requires time to subject the suspect to a mental assessment, conduct further interrogation, and establish whether he had any accomplices in the crime,” the affidavit stated.