Ugandan court sentences man to death for nursery school child killings

A High Court judge sentenced Christopher Okello Onyum to death on Thursday for the killings of four nursery school children in Kampala, a punishment that landed with force in a country still shaken by the attack and by the ease with which the suspect entered a place meant to protect the very young.

Justice Alice Komuhangi Khaukha said the evidence showed a planned attack, rejecting Onyum’s insanity defense and finding that searches on his phone and laptop included “schools near me” and “ISIS beheading.” The court said the assault at the Gaba Early Childhood Development Program, also identified as the Ggaba Early Childhood Development Centre in a Kampala suburb, lasted less than seven minutes.

The children killed on April 2 were Eteku Gideon, Keisha Agenorwoth, Ignatius Sseruyange and Ryan Odeke. Ugandan media reported that the victims were toddlers, aged two and three, and that Onyum had allegedly disguised himself as a parent, briefly spoke with administrators, then locked the gate before attacking the children with a machete.

The sentence reflected the harshest end of Uganda’s legal response to child killings, but it also raised the broader question of what justice is meant to do in a case like this: punish a single defendant, deter future violence, or restore faith in institutions that failed to keep a nursery school secure. Uganda still imposes death sentences for murder, yet executions have not been carried out in roughly two decades, leaving the ruling to carry heavy symbolic weight as much as legal force.

The trial itself became part of the national reaction. President Yoweri Museveni ordered it fast-tracked under a mobile court arrangement, with open-air sessions that drew hundreds of bereaved locals and other spectators. When the death sentence was announced, a crowd watching from a tent erupted in cheers, underscoring the raw public anger that has trailed the case.

That public response also exposed the strain on due process. The Uganda Law Society called the mobile-court proceedings a “judicial lynching rally,” a sharp rebuke that reflected concern over how swiftly the case moved and how intensely the public atmosphere surrounded it. Onyum had pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers argued that he had long been mentally unstable and had been committed to Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital.

The verdict closed one chapter in a case that has become a test of how Uganda responds when violence reaches children in school. It left behind not only a death sentence, but a wider reckoning over school safety, mental health claims, premeditation and the country’s willingness to use its most severe punishment in the face of national trauma.