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The family of a British BBC charity worker murdered in Nairobi more than three years ago have said they are still seeking information surrounding the circumstances of her death, after a coroner concluded she had been unlawfully killed.
Kate Mitchell, 42, originally from Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, was working in Kenya as a project manager at BBC Media Action, the corporation’s international development charity.
Her body was found in her room on the eighth floor of an Ibis hotel on 19 November 2021. An intruder had gained entry and attacked her. His body was found on the ground below.
On Tuesday, Karin Welsh, a coroner in Newcastle, concluded that Mitchell had been unlawfully killed. At an inquest she heard that a postmortem examination in the UK revealed that Mitchell died as a result of a blunt head injury and pressure on her neck.
She said the full circumstances surrounding her death had yet to be ascertained from the Kenyan authorities. Welsh said the man who attacked Mitchell “either fell or jumped from the eighth-floor bedroom window and he also was found deceased.
“That’s the totality of the information we have been able to glean from Nairobi,” she said.
Afterwards, Mitchell’s brother Pete Mitchell called for the Kenyan authorities to properly investigate his sister’s death. She had been working in Addis Ababa but had reluctantly been redeployed to Nairobi because of the civil war in Ethiopia, he said.
He stressed that what happened to his sister could have happened anywhere. “Kate’s death was nothing to do with her job. What happened to Kate isn’t something that happens in just Africa, it is something that happens in hotels to women. It is something that happens to women. It was femicide. She was killed in a way women are often killed everywhere. It could have happened in London, or Whitley Bay,” he said.
The coroner said she knew the family still had questions and she hoped they would be answered.
Mitchell said the family had instructed a lawyer to push for an inquest in Nairobi that could explain more about the circumstances of his sister’s murder. He said: “The Kenyan police have just stonewalled any inquiries. They have refused to do anything about it.”
He said the family did not have full closure because of the Kenyan authorities’ reluctance to fully investigate his sister’s death.
“Whatever it is that the Kenyan police are reluctant to have brought to light, the collateral damage of that is that we don’t have answers about Kate’s death.” Mitchell said the family of the prime suspect, now dead, also deserved “answers and peace”.
Mitchell paid tribute to his sister, who, he said, lived for her job. “She was madly in love with the work that she did and the people that she worked with. She was great craic. She liked a drink and is sort of famous in Whitley Bay. She was an absolute terror at school, just very lively. She is also the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
Mitchell said his sister had worked in in countries across Africa including Ethiopia, South Sudan and Zambia.
“She was professional and she was really brave,” he said. “She would go to refugee camps, go to prisons and get people out of trouble. She did the work of international development and trying to empower people to create media organisations.”
