Ugandan Judge Sentences Onyum to Death Over Nursery School Killings

A judge in Uganda sentenced Christopher Okello Onyum to death on Thursday after rejecting his insanity plea in the killings of four children at a nursery school in Kampala. The ruling said he should "suffer death" for the April 2 attack at Gaba Early Childhood Development Program.

Onyum, a 38-year-old defendant, was accused of entering the nursery school in a suburb of Kampala after disguising himself as a parent, then briefly talking to administrators before locking the gate and attacking the children. The case moved through mobile courts under an order from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

Ggaba Community Church grounds

On Monday, April 13, 2026, Onyum appeared in court at the Ggaba Community Church grounds in Kampala, where the open-air proceedings drew hundreds of bereaved locals and others. The judge said he had "failed to adduce any evidence to support this claim that he was not mentally okay" when rejecting the insanity plea.

The Uganda Law Society described the trial as "a judicial lynching rally," while the judge’s sentence closed the fast-tracked case with the harshest penalty available. The court’s ruling turned the April 2 killings into a finished legal judgment rather than a continuing allegation.

Uganda mobile courts

The mobile court process gave the case an unusual public setting, with witnesses and residents watching the hearings unfold outside a standard courtroom. That format placed the trial in front of the same community that had been shaken by the deaths of four children at the nursery school.

The sentence leaves the Kampala case at its legal endpoint under the process used by Uganda’s courts, with the punishment already decided and the defendant’s insanity claim rejected in open court. The ruling now stands as the final word in a case that began with a machete attack inside Gaba Early Childhood Development Program and ended with a death sentence.