A teacher has been charged with assaulting and allegedly causing actual bodily harm to her estranged husband in a domestic row.
The preparatory teacher was prosecuted after losing a bid to block her trial.
Ms Lucy Nungari Waweru is accused of hurting Patrick Waweru, a veteran pilot last November.
Ms Waweru had pleaded with the court to defer plea taking to await the outcome of another case where her husband is charged with assaulting her in November 2025.
In both cases, senior resident magistrate Mr Eric Muriuki sitting at the Kiambu Law Courts heard the two cases stem from one domestic row which erupted on November 25, 2025.
The arraignment of Lucy Nungari has brought to the fore a long-running domestĺc dispute involving the two parties.
Ms Lucy Nungari, a teacher of a preparatory school, denied a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm to her estranged husband.
Upon entering a plea of not guilty, Lucy applied to be released on bond saying it was her constitutional right.
The prosecution did not oppose the bail application.
In a brief ruling, the magistrate freed her on a bond of KES 200,000 with one surety of similar amount and an alternative cash bail of KES 100,000.
The case was listed for pretrial directions on August 6, 2026.
The plea-taking was preceded by a spirited legal contest after the defense made two applications seeking to prevent the proceedings as scheduled.
Defense lawyer Jane Odiya urged the court to defer the plea, arguing that the new criminal case was closely connected to another pending matter before the same court in which the complainant, Patrick Waweru, is the accused and Ms Lucy Nungari is the complainant.
Ms Odiya told the court that the existing case, Kiambu Criminal Case No. 2115 of 2025, allegedly involves allegations of assault causing actual bodily harm against her client, through strangulation by Patrick Waweru.
She argued that the alleged incident occurred on November 18, 2025, and that the present case against Ms Lucy Nungari had been brought shortly before the hearing of the earlier case in which the teacher has alleged she was assaulted by her estranged husband.
According to the defense, the new proceedings amounted to an abuse of the court process and the criminal justice system, given that the two cases arose from what she described as the same incident.
The lawyer urged the court to consider the circumstances surrounding the two cases, including protection orders that had allegedly been issued in December 2025.
She questioned why the two parties had not been charged together in the first place, arguing that the complainant in the present case was himself facing criminal proceedings arising from the same domestic dispute.
"An accused in one matter cannot quickly come and claim to be a complainant in another matter," Ms Odiya submitted, urging the court to interrogate the circumstances under which the fresh charges had been preferred.
She maintained that her application was not intended to prosecute the other criminal case but to demonstrate why the plea in the new matter should be deferred pending consideration of the issues arising in the earlier case.
The prosecution, however, opposed the application, insisting that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) had independently reviewed the matter and made a decision to charge the suspect.
The prosecution argued that the existence of another criminal case did not prevent the ODPP from exercising its constitutional mandate to institute criminal proceedings where there was sufficient evidence.
Counsel for the complainant, Kimani Wakimaa, opposed the defense applications and urged the court to allow plea taking.
Wakimaa asked the court to allow the complainant tender submissions as the law permits victims interest to be considered citing a Supreme Court decision between John Lendrix Waswa v Republic being Petition No. 23 of 2019.
In that decision, the apex court allowed complainants to participate in criminal proceedings.
He also opposed an application seeking to bar the media from covering the proceedings, arguing that there was no legal basis for preventing journalists from reporting on an open court case.
He maintained that the fact that the accused was a school preparatory school head did not make the case different from other criminal matters pending before the Kenyan courts.
"There is nothing special with this case," the lawyer submitted, arguing that the proceedings are in open court and should be covered by the media like any other matter.
He further told the court that the domestic nature of the dispute was not a new phenomena and that both parties and their advocates had been aware of the family’s sour relationship and the circumstances surrounding the dispute from the beginning.
Ms Lucy Nungari was arrested on December 9, 2025, and released on a police bond of KES 10,000.
She took plea seven months later.
She paid the cash bail then released from custody.