A 22-year-old university student met a stranger from a dating app. She never came home alive — and Kenya has not stopped talking since.
At 12:08 in the morning on Saturday, April 26, 2026, Consolata Githinji posted what would become her final photo. Wearing a brown top, a black coat, and a neatly styled wig, she snapped a picture of herself inside a lift at Kaisa Garden Apartments in Kileleshwa, Nairobi. She looked radiant. She looked happy. She captioned nothing. By 5:00 a.m., her body lay three floors below at the building’s basement level, her skull fractured, ribs broken, and one lung collapsed. Kenya woke up to a story it could not look away from.
Connie, as her friends and followers knew her, was a fourth-year ICT student at Murang’a University of Technology, a young woman from a humble background who had carved out a presence for herself online. Bright-eyed and aspirational, she had traveled to Nairobi that night to meet Tonny Odhiambo, a 33-year-old businessman she had connected with through an online dating application. The two had first crossed paths in 2023 at Greatwall Gardens in Athi River and maintained contact through WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok. When they finally arranged to meet in person, she took a bus from Murang’a and dressed carefully. She headed to Hurlingham, where they had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant before making their way to the apartment. She arrived at a destination from which she never departed alive.
“We want the truth. We want justice for Constance.” — Githinji Family Spokesperson
WHAT THE CCTV FOOTAGE REVEALS
Investigators from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have spent days dissecting a patchwork of surveillance footage from cameras inside and around Kaisa Garden Apartments. What the footage shows is a 14-minute gap that has become the centrepiece of a national debate. The guard assigned to the floor was recorded departing the hallway at 4:46 a.m. By 5:00 a.m., Connie’s body had already hit the ground. Those 14 minutes, currently unaccounted for on camera, are what detectives are working furiously to explain.
When another video emerged on social media showing Tonny Odhiambo rushing through the compound, shouting that she had killed herself—before her body had even been located—Kenyans online erupted. His certainty before the discovery struck many as deeply suspicious. Others argued it was the frantic behaviour of a man in shock. Either way, the footage has been watched millions of times since it began circulating on X and TikTok.
AUTOPSY CONTRADICTS SUSPECT’S ACCOUNT
On Thursday, April 30, government pathologists working alongside doctors appointed by the Githinji family released their post-mortem findings. The conclusion was unambiguous: Consolata Githinji was murdered. The injuries found on her body — blunt force trauma to the head, multiple broken ribs, a collapsed left lung, and deep lacerations — were inconsistent with a simple fall from a window or balcony. Odhiambo had maintained throughout his initial questioning that Connie had expressed suicidal thoughts and had taken her own life. The autopsy dismantled that claim entirely.
The DCI arrested Odhiambo at the scene on the morning of April 26. A Nairobi court subsequently remanded him for ten days to allow investigators to gather further evidence. As detectives continue analysing mobile phone records and digital communications, the family has made their position clear: they do not accept the suicide narrative and will not rest until Connie gets justice.
A GENERATION FORCED TO CONFRONT ONLINE DATING DANGERS
Beyond the grief and the outrage, the death of Connie Githinji has triggered a sobering national conversation about the dangers young Kenyans face when meeting strangers from the internet. Safety advocates and women’s rights organizations have urged young people—particularly women—to take basic precautions when meeting online contacts for the first time: always meet in public spaces, share your location with a trusted friend, and never allow a stranger to determine the venue. Airbnb hosts and short-stay apartment operators are also facing scrutiny, with critics arguing that the ease with which units can be booked anonymously creates environments where accountability evaporates, and victims have no protection. Connie’s best friend, TikTok creator Regina Syombua, published an emotional tribute describing a woman full of life, laughter, and ambition. Three weeks before her death, Connie had uploaded a video from the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi, playfully asking her friends to guess a KSh 95,400 dinner bill. She revealed the total with a burst of laughter. The clip, now haunting in its context, has been shared alongside thousands of messages mourning a young woman who deserved far more time on this earth.
READ MORE:
Connie Githinji’s Mother Speaks After Her Mysterious Death at Kileleshwa Airbnb
