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The Salem Evening News
Missing victim found to have been killed By JULIE MANGANIS News staff
SALEM -- Martin Maingi, a Kenyan immigrant who chose to make his home in a wooded area near the Salem-Peabody line until two violent assaults forced him to uproot his life last year, was killed last month by an MBTA train in Everett. His death went all but unnoticed outside of the small community of Kenyan immigrants with whom Maingi had lost contact last summer.
That's why on Wednesday, Salem police and Essex County prosecutors had no idea what had happened to Maingi, 45, who was scheduled to testify against his alleged assailant in the second incident.
Police from Salem and Peabody had been looking for Maingi for months, as the trial date neared, but could not find him. As a result, the charges against his alleged assailant, Richard Arthur Beaulieu, were dismissed. Beaulieu, police and prosecutors had alleged, was angry at Maingi for testifying against his son, charged with attacking Maingi two years ago. Yesterday, after an Evening News story appeared about the case, Salem Police Sgt. Conrad Prosniewski got a call from Livingston Ronoh, a friend of Maingi.
It was a call he'd feared he might get. Ronoh told him Maingi's life came to an end on the night of April 14, on a railroad junction near Route 16 in Everett. Maingi was struck by something protruding from the side of a passing train, fracturing his skull, said MBTA spokesman Brian Pedro.
It took MBTA police a few days to track down anyone who knew Maingi. They found a Salem Hospital admission card on him and visited the hospital a few days after the accident.
Hospital records listed Ronoh as a person to contact in case of emergency.
Ronoh, of Lynn, said that friends of Maingi had become concerned about him in recent years, and had lost touch with him completely last summer. They believe he moved out of the area out of fear of Beaulieu. His life had once been filled with great promise, said Ronoh.
Maingi was a star pupil in his village school in Kenya, so bright that he was one of just a few from that part of the country to attend a national secondary school. Then the people of the village, Etikoni, in the eastern Kenyan district of Mbiuni, gathered their resources to send Maingi to America to attend college in 1981.
Ronoh recalls Maingi describing the excitement of his entire village. "He was the first person in his village to fly," said Ronoh. "He was very brave." Maingi told him that "people still look up and say maybe that is the plane bringing him home." Maingi enrolled at Magdalen College, a small religious school in New Hampshire, where he earned a degree in theology. That degree is among a briefcase full of papers documenting Maingi's life, papers Maingi had given to Ronoh for safekeeping several years ago.
Maingi later enrolled in graduate school at Tufts University to study philosophy. Ronoh, who was Maingi's roommate for several years in the 1980s, said Maingi ran out of money and left school. "After college he wanted to go home," said Ronoh. "He thought he would go back and become a pastor or professor of theology. He had a lot of dreams."
He never managed to get back to Kenya, however. He held down a series of jobs over the years, including working as a security guard and later at Steve's Quality Market in downtown Salem, and had an apartment in this city.
Ronoh said he began to notice "a small mental problem." "He wasn't the same Martin I used to know," said Ronoh, who attributed the change to culture shock and loneliness. "In this country, there's so many people, but you really don't know anybody. You're really alone. You don't have the kind of family system" that exists in Kenya, said Ronoh. "A lot of people get depressed. I noticed this change." Ronoh pleaded with his friend to check into Bayridge Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Lynn. Maingi refused. "He didn't think there was anything wrong with him," said Ronoh.
Friends tried to help him get a job and offered him a place to stay, but "he was just so fearlessly independent. He didn't want to feel he was dependent on anybody," Ronoh said. Maingi testified during the trial last year that he had lost his job, then his apartment, and chose to camp in a wooded area between the North River and the railroad tracks off Harmony Grove Road. There, he would pass his days reading and sipping from a 40-ounce bottle of beer. He supported himself by "canning," collecting bottles and cans to redeem them for the deposit money.
He was often seen wheeling a large bag of empties to either the Stop & Shop or Kappy's. The assaults, in the summer of 2000 and then last year, left him fearful, said Ronoh. That's why, he believes, Maingi moved away last year.
"It's a very sad story," said Ronoh. It fell to Ronoh to contact Maingi's 85-year-old mother. It took two days for the news to travel from Nairobi to the village, where, Ronoh was told, "she broke down." Now Ronoh and other friends are hoping to return Maingi's body, which remains in a Boston morgue, to Kenya for a proper funeral.
"We are trying to send his body home to his mother," said Ronoh. Ronoh and others in the closely-knit immigrant community have managed to raise about $1,000, but have been told it will cost as much as 10 times that amount to send Maingi home to his mother. Cremation is not an option, said Ronoh. He hopes to establish a fund at a local bank to accept donations.
Prosniewski had come to know Maingi while investigating the original assault. "I am deeply saddened," said the detective. "Martin surprised me," said Prosniewski. "He was very intelligent." He added that Maingi "came across as someone who wouldn't harm anyone."
That impression was shared by Essex County Assistant District Attorney Alex Cain, who was handed a note in court yesterday informing him of the death.
"It came as a really big shock," said Cain. "It's a
sad ending to his life."
You can also contact Mr Livingston Ronoh for
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