In a bizarre turn of events, a young man in the Kenyan city of Avendo was arrested for faking his own kidnapping before returning home when no ransom was paid.
According to local paper the Standard, on January 5, the 22-year-old man bid his mother goodnight and left the house, only to scream as if he had been attacked. When his mother ran out to the street, he was gone, leaving behind only his blood-stained jacket.
The man then posed as a kidnapper and demanded 20,000 Kenyan shillings ($161.42) as ransom from his mother. Police confirmed that the young man's mother filed a missing persons report the following day.
After spending the first night on a maize plantation, the man moved to an unfinished building where he stayed for two more nights. He then spent an additional day at a friend's house before realizing that his mother would not be able to raise the demanded ransom.
He then decided to return home and confessed to staging the whole thing, telling the police a friend had convinced him to fake the kidnapping to get money from his mother, a single parent, for his school fees. He had procured cow blood and kept it hidden under his bed to smear on his jacket.
The young man's mother stated that her son did not have any outstanding debts for education and called his actions shameful. The man has been arrested and is facing charges for falsely reporting a crime and wasting police resources.
