The killing of SC Villa captain David Owori has once again forced Ugandan sport to confront a painful question: How many more athletes and public figures must die violently before the country moves beyond investigating attacks after they happen and invests more seriously in preventing the next tragedy?
Owori died on August 5 after being attacked the previous night in Makindye, Kampala. Police say he was robbed of an iPhone 14 Pro Max and have since arrested two suspects after tracking the stolen phone. Officers also recovered dozens of suspected stolen phones and electronic devices as detectives investigate a possible wider criminal network.
While this progress is welcome-and it would be inaccurate to suggest security agencies have done nothing-the harder question remains: Why does their most visible intervention so often come only after someone has already been killed?
Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa captured the gravity of the matter in Parliament following Owori’s death. ‘This is fundamentally a security matter. We are seeing people being attacked by criminals wielding iron bars and other blunt objects,’ Tayebwa said last week.
He called for thorough investigations and a review of the wider security situation, adding: ‘David Owori is well known because of his contribution to sports, but there are many ordinary citizens losing their lives under similar circumstances whose names never reach this House.’
Owori’s death is particularly disturbing because Ugandan sport had barely recovered from the killing of Rugby Cranes and Black Pirates forward Sydney Gongodyo. Gongodyo died on June 5 after being attacked by a mob in Kampala following allegations that he had snatched a woman’s handbag. Police condemned the killing, warning that ‘mob action undermines the rule of law and can result in the loss of innocent lives.’
Police subsequently arrested 11 suspects, using video footage to identify alleged participants. But the response went beyond arrests. Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja told Parliament: ‘On behalf of the government, I want to commit that we shall, using the police and all security agencies and intelligence, try to ensure that we stamp out this act of mob justice.’ She also directed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to present a report to Parliament on the problem.
Police statistics show that 3,764 people were killed through mob action between 2021 and 2025. In 2025 alone, police recorded 950 murders by mob action. Those numbers should terrify us. When hundreds of Ugandans can be killed annually by crowds acting as judge, jury, and executioner, repeated warnings against taking the law into one’s hands are clearly insufficient.
Ugandan sport has travelled this road before. On September 15, 1991, legendary Uganda Cranes and KCC midfielder, coach, and former FUFA general secretary Moses Nsereko was murdered at Wampewo Flats in Kololo. More than three decades later, his killing remains one of Ugandan football’s enduring unresolved tragedies.
Then came former national boxing captain Isaac ‘Zebra’ Ssenyange, shot dead near his Bwaise home in December 2020. Unlike many unresolved killings, Zebra’s case included an extraordinary admission from the Head of State. President Museveni acknowledged that security personnel had killed Zebra after officers went to take him in for questioning.
‘I am very sorry, so sorry about this,’ Museveni said at the time, promising: ‘I will bring my entire findings to the knowledge of the family.’
Six months later, however, then-UPDF spokesperson Brig. Flavia Byekwaso was still asking for patience, stating that investigations could take years depending on their complexity. By July 2024, Zebra’s widow, Mercy Mukankusi, was still publicly asking for answers, telling Daily Monitor: ‘No one has ever come out to tell us what happened on that day.’
A month later, President Museveni met Zebra’s family at State House and officially extended an apology on behalf of the UPDF, with the army also apologizing directly. That acknowledgement mattered, but apology and accountability are not the same thing. Who was individually held responsible? Was the promised investigation report ever publicly released? What institutional lessons were drawn to ensure such a tragedy could not happen again?
The circumstances surrounding Nsereko, Zebra, Gongodyo, and Owori are very different and should not be casually bundled together. Yet, one thread connects them: the desperate need for prevention, accountability, and closure whenever Ugandans lose their lives violently.
Security cannot simply mean announcing arrests following public outrage. Effective security must mean identifying crime hotspots before someone is killed, dismantling organized robbery networks, improving lighting and surveillance in vulnerable urban areas, using intelligence against repeat offenders, and building enough public confidence in law enforcement so that communities surrender suspects rather than lynch them.
The Gongodyo case particularly exposes the dangerous breakdown in respect for the criminal justice system. A person accused of theft is a suspect, not a convict. No crowd has the authority to investigate, convict, and execute another citizen on a Kampala street.
The arrests following the killings of Gongodyo and Owori demonstrate what determined investigation can achieve. But the ultimate measure of security is not how quickly suspects are arrested after an athlete dies; it is whether that athlete-and the ordinary Ugandan whose name will never reach Parliament-could have been protected in the first place.
Uganda mourned Nsereko. It mourned Zebra. It mourned Gongodyo. Now, it mourns Owori. The question goes far beyond who killed David Owori-it is what will be done differently today so that there is no next name.