A church elder called his wife by phone, asking her to rush home, but when she got there, she found him dead, lying in a pool of blood.

Mr John Waweru Kinyanjui was an elder at the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), Thome Estate.

A Ceska pistol lay beside the body and initial investigations indicate the man may have committed suicide.

The body had a single bullet wound in the chest.

Mr Kinyanjui was licensed to possess a firearm.

His wife, Mary, told police that she was attending a funeral when she received the call at around 2pm on Thursday.

"Mr Kinyanjui, 67, a businessman was recuperating in the house with a spinal injury. Upon entering (the house), she found him lying on the floor of the living room in a pool of blood with a Ceska pistol beside him. She called her house help and the gardener to assist resuscitate (him) but he was already dead. A suicide note was found upstairs in his bedroom," according to a police report.

Police found a spent cartridge, and two magazines with 24 rounds of ammunition were taken from the house.

The incident happened at Balozi in Thome Estate.

SOMBRE MOOD

When the Nation visited the man’s home on Thursday evening, his relatives were in a sombre mood, coming to terms with the tragic loss of their own.

Some of the young men in the house were agitated by the presence of the media, understandably so, because of the circumstances surrounding the 3pm shooting.

One of the guards told the Nation that Mr Kinyanjui had been "travelling for treatment a lot of times".

A woman from the house, who wished to remain anonymous, said the “elderly man” has been "very sick for a while".

The Nation learnt that he had been ailing for a long time and was scheduled to travel overseas for treatment next week.

Scene-of-crime detectives took the body to the Kenyatta University mortuary.

Additional reporting by Eunice Kilonzo