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Her name was Kasikayire Mana Michella. She was four years old, and by all accounts she was doing what four-year-olds do every day without anyone worrying too much about it. She was playing.
That play, investigators now believe, led her into the backseat of a black Mercedes Benz parked inside the Traffic Department yard at Adjumani Central Police Station. The car had been sitting there, unchecked, for a long time. And once the door closed behind her, she could not get out.
Her body was found on the afternoon of Friday, March 21, inside that vehicle. She had been missing for five days.
The family that was searching
Michella’s grandmother, Sergeant Angeyo Lucy, is a police officer herself. She serves in the Child and Family Protection Unit at Adjumani Police Station, a unit whose entire purpose is to protect children and vulnerable families from harm. The cruelty of that detail has not been lost on anyone in Adjumani.
Michella had been staying at the police barracks while attending Mummy’s Care Nursery and Primary School. She disappeared on March 16. A missing person case, reference ADJ CRB 145/2026, was filed two days later on March 18, and search efforts were launched across the area. For nearly a week, her family and colleagues looked for her.
The car was on the same station compound the entire time.
What investigators found
Scene of Crime Officers and detectives examined the vehicle after the discovery was made at around 2:00 p.m. A postmortem examination was conducted, and Michella’s body was transferred to Adjumani General Hospital mortuary.
North West Nile Regional Police Spokesperson SP Collins Asea said preliminary findings suggest Michella entered the parked vehicle while playing and became trapped inside, possibly after accidentally locking herself in. Investigations are ongoing.
A question that hangs over everything
There is something that deserves to be said plainly: a car parked on a police station yard, left long enough to go unexamined for days, became the place where a missing child lay undiscovered for nearly a week. The investigation will determine the full circumstances. But it is a question the community, and the police service, will need to sit with honestly.
Michella was four. She deserved to grow up. The least she deserves now is a full accounting of how this happened, so that it does not happen to another child.
SP Asea confirmed that investigations are continuing.
