Kenya aristocrat found guilty

One of Kenya’s most famous white aristocrats was convicted of manslaughter Thursday in the shooting of a black poacher, a case that underlined sharp divisions here over land, race and privilege.

Tom Cholmondeley (CHUM-lee), 40, was originally charged with murder in the 2006 shooting of Robert Njoya, 37, a poacher.

Njoya and two friends with machetes and six dogs had been checking illegal traps on Cholmondeley’s 56,000-acre Rift Valley farm when they ran into the landowner and his friend, rally driver Carl “Flash” Tundo. Cholmondeley says he fired to frighten off the dogs. But Njoya was hit and bled to death.

The court case had been postponed several times in the last three years.

Judge Muga Apondi dismissed the not-guilty verdict given by two civilian lay assessors, reduced the charge to manslaughter, ruled Cholmondeley guilty and scheduled sentencing for Tuesday. The sentence could be the three years Cholmondeley has already served or as much as the maximum of life imprisonment.

Apondi ruled Cholmondeley did not intend to kill Njoya, citing the first aid he administered to the wounded man before driving him to a hospital, and Cholmondeley’s cooperation with police.

Later, Njoya’s widow, Sarah, said she hoped Cholmondeley -- a father of two -- would not receive additional jail time, fearing his family could run into the kind of difficulties she has had in bringing up her four young sons.

Njoya’s death was more controversial because it was the second time in about a year that Cholmondeley was implicated in a fatal shooting on his family’s farm. The first case, in which an off-duty game warden was killed, was dismissed for lack of evidence.

After Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963, many departing settlers transferred land to Africans, with the British government underwriting some of the costs. Some, including Cholmondeley’s family, kept their land and became Kenyan citizens.

Cholmondeley’s great-grandfather, the third Baron Delamere of Britain, moved here at the turn of the 20th century and was among the most influential European settlers in Kenya.