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RedditOne afternoon last May, a bearded 36-year-old black man named Robert Njoya set out with friends to hunt for bush meat on a private ranch called Soysambu, in the heart of Kenya's Great Rift Valley. They brought along a pack of dogs for running animals into wire snares, and they carried an iron bar for clubbing their catch, and pangas, or machetes, for butchering the meat.
That same day, a 38-year-old white man named Tom Cholmondeley, whose family has owned and managed Soysambu for almost a century, was touring the 48,000-acre property with a friend. He carried a 30-06 rifle loaded with soft point bullets, as a precaution against buffalo.
Late that afternoon, in a dense stand of acacia trees and lelechwe bushes, the two parties crossed paths. Cholmondeley knelt and fired a series of shots. Two dogs died on the spot. One bullet also hit Njoya, who was carrying a partly butchered impala. Soon after, at a hospital up the road, Njoya was dead, of massive bleeding.
It was the second time Cholmondeley had shot and killed a black man on the ranch in little more than a year.
Abstract of an article by Richard Conniff, originally published in the February 2007 issue of SMITHSONIAN. All rights reserved.
What is the update as regards the fate of Mr. Cholmondeley? Thank you! Mary Johnson Greeley, Colorado
Posted by Mary Johnson on January 17,2008 | 03:02PM
I am doing a paper for my local history club and I have been following the trial in Kenya but can't find out if any decision has been reached and, if so, what it is?
Posted by Barbara Allsup on January 28,2008 | 08:51AM
I too would like to know what happened to Mr. Cholmondely. I used this article for my class. Thanks
Posted by Diane Meyers on December 10,2008 | 10:12AM