Ugandan police work at the scene where four children were killed in a stabbing incident at Ggaba Early Childhood Development Program School in Kampala, Uganda, on April 2, 2026. (Photo by Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua)
Kampala, Uganda | URN | Parents of the toddlers killed at Ggaba Early Childhood Development Center are still struggling to come to terms with the brutal loss of children they had entrusted to the school to learn, play, and grow. The tragedy occurred on Thursday, April 2026, when Christopher Okello Onyu, posing as a parent, entered the kindergarten, paid 180,000 shillings to enroll children, and then drew knives, attacking toddlers at play. By the time an alarm sounded, four children had been fatally stabbed.
Witnesses, including teachers and neighbors who rushed to assist, remain traumatized, still searching for answers about the attacker’s motives, which remain unclear. The perpetrator, saved from a mob by police and UPDF soldiers, is now in police custody at Kabalagala Police Division, where Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) detectives are interrogating him and evaluating his psychological condition. Some reports indicate a history of mental health issues.
Families faced the grim reality on Friday as parents lingered at Mulago City Mortuary, waiting to claim their children for burial. Grief and trauma enveloped relatives struggling to make sense of that dark Thursday. One parent, Lawrence Mbazira of Ggaba, lost his two-year-old son, Ignatius Seruyange, who will be laid to rest in Gomba District. He recounted how his son had resisted going to school that morning, only to be coaxed along by caretakers.
“He resisted that morning, crying that he didn’t want to go to the teacher. Then he said goodbye, Dad, and they took him. I didn’t know it was the last time I’d ever see him alive. Hours later, as I was preparing to go to the city, someone came running to my door to say the children at the daycare had been attacked,” Mbazira said. He added that upon rushing to the school, he could not find his son, a moment filled with dread.
“My wife arrived next. I couldn’t bring myself to enter the room where they’d laid the bodies; she went in. I only saw her crying bitterly, and I knew then that my child was among the dead,” Mbazira said, shortly before receiving his son’s body. Another parent, UPDF Major Jack Amono, the mother of Keisha Alengat, was on duty when the attack occurred. Keisha’s grandmother, Edith Nabanja, a local leader in Ggaba’s Water Zone, recalled her last memory of the girl.
“She’d been taken to school as usual; soon after, word came that children had died there. The mother got the news first, when she was away, and told me to go to the school. Now I only hope for justice for our innocent children who were murdered so brutally. We need answers—what did we do to deserve this?” Nabanja said.
Following the attack, Minister of Higher Education John Chrysestom Muyingo visited the crime scene on Friday and ordered the closure of the facility and its sister schools while investigations continue. The Ministry of Education and Sports pledged to support the families and the school staff, some of whom sustained injuries during the attack.
