By Justin Fenton, Kayla Bawroski and Kevin Rector, Baltimore Sun Media Group
2:48 p.m. EDT, May 31, 2012
A 21-year-old Morgan State University student told investigators that he ate the heart and portions of the brain of a man whose dismembered remains were found in his Joppa home, according to a grisly account from the Harford County Sheriff’s Office.
The arrest of Alexander Kinyua came almost a week after Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, 37, went missing, and followed a search of the home the two men apparently shared in the 500 block of Terrapin Terrace in Joppatowne early Wednesday morning, police said.
Kinyua, an electrical engineering student who until January was involved in the ROTC program at Morgan, was ordered held without bail at a court appearance Thursday afternoon.
Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, said today that Agyei-Kodie had been reported missing, but information collected by detectives “didn’t pass the smell test.” On Monday, police released a public appeal for help in locating him.
Late Tuesday night, Antony Kinyua, notified police that his son, Kinyua’s brother, had found what they believed were human remains in the basement of the house, according to charging documents. Upon their arrival, Jarrod Kinyua told police he found a human head and two human hands inside metal tins, under a blanket in the laundry room.
When he asked Alexander Kinyua about the remains, Jarrod Kinyua said his brother denied that they were human and said they were animal remains, according to charging documents. After calling his father, Antony Kinyua, downstairs, the pair discovered the remains had been moved and Alexander Kinyua was washing out the metal tins.
With a search and seizure warrant for the location, deputies were able to locate the head and hands on the main floor of the house, according to charging documents. They also interviewed Alexander Kinyua, who allegedly admitted that he had killed Agyei-Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and afterward, ingested his heart and portions of his brain.
Kinyua also directed police to Towne Baptist Church, in the 500 block of Trimble Road, to find the rest of the remains, which were found in a Dumpster on the property, according to charging documents.
The case comes on the heels of shocking incidents in cities like Miami, where a naked man believed to be high on bath salts ate another man’s face, and New Jersey, where a man disemboweled himself and reportedly threw his intestines at police officers. Police there say they aren’t sure whether the man, Wayne Carter, was on drugs or suffering from mental illness.
At his first court appearance, defense attorney Lynne McChrystal requested that reasonable bail to be set in the case, adding that Kinyua has been in Harford County for six years and in Maryland for nine years. He is self-employed and performs consulting work, she added.
Upon questioning by Judge John L. Dunnigan, Kinyua said that all of his family members resided in Maryland and he was originally from Nairobi, Kenya.
Assistant State’s Attorney Trenna Manners cited those out-of-country ties, as well as the “grisly” nature of the crime, when she asked for Kinyua to be held without bail.
The charges are not Kinyua’s first in recent weeks, and a previous arrest and Kinyua’s online postings point to a troubled man. In January, he was disenrolled from the ROTC program after two-and-a-half-years of participation, said Lt. Col. James Lewis, a professor of military service who oversees the program. Officials said it followed a disciplinary incident.
Then on May 20, Kinyua, who otherwise does not have a criminal record in Maryland, was charged with first-degree assault and reckless endangerment in Baltimore in connection with an incident that allegedly occurred May 19 at the Thurgood Marshall apartments, according to court records.
In that case, according to police, Kinyua “randomly” attacked another Morgan State student in a doorway of the apartment complex with a baseball bat, then fled into a nearby wooded area. The victim, listed as Joshua Ceasar, suffered fractures to his skull, arm, shoulder, as well as blindness to his left eye. The first responding officer saw Ceasar stumbling toward her, with blood coming from his forehead, and the officer noted a large amount of blood in the doorway.
Kinyua was ordered held on $220,000 bond in that case, and university officials said the school was in the process of expelling him.
On May 25, what appeared to be a plea from his parents for help paying Kinyua’s legal fees in the case from was posted on the website Mwakilishi.com, a Kenyan news site. The post, which has since been removed, said Kinyua had been arrested for “being involved in a fight in his dormitory room at Morgan State University.”
The online plea says, “In order to get him the best defense possible, we need to secure an attorney who will take his case and leave no stone unturned.”
It also states a fundraising event was scheduled at the International Christian Community Church on Sunday. He was scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing in that case June 19.
