Six suspected thugs were shot dead on Tuesday night by police inside a factory that they had broken into, vandalized property and tried to steal in Mlolongo area along Mombasa road, Nairobi.
Police say the men had broken into African Cotton Company when an alarm was raised and that they recovered a laptop, a desktop computer, crude weapons and CCTV cameras.
According to Athi River OCPD, Mtoro Kizito, the police officers shot the suspects after they refused to heed their order to surrender and tried to escape on foot prompting the shooting.
"Around 15 men drilled a large opening on the factories perimeter wall which they used to go through into the tissue paper making company before getting in at about midnight on Tuesday. They then vandalized the CCTV cameras there to avoid being detected before moving into offices where they broke in and started to ransack drawers. It was then that an alarm was raised alerting police who rushed there and killed six of them," explained Kizito.
The OCPD said that the rest of the suspects escaped as the police tried to deal with the ones inside the factory and to recover the stolen goods.
This was one of the highest number of criminals shot dead in the area in the recent past.
Among the stollen goods which were recovered were, laptops, CCTV cameras, a desktop computer and crude weapons. Their bodies were taken to city mortuary.