Newsday CoverageLong Island
Son planned father's murder
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BY CHRISTINE ARMARIO, KARLA SCHUSTER AND JENNIFER SMITH
STAFF WRITERS
Newsday, August 29, 2005The bludgeoning death of a Nassau University Medical Center emergency room surgeon was the culmination of longstanding tension with the son charged with his murder, Nassau police said yesterday.
Mulumba Kazigo, 26, of Lincolndale, planned the death of Dr. Joseph Kazigo several days in advance, authorities said yesterday, purchasing weapons, plastic and tape to wrap the body, and using a family car to dispose of the corpse within 10 minutes of the family's Westchester home.
The elder Kazigo, 67, lived with his family in Westchester but often stayed at a Westbury apartment due to a long commute from the East Meadow hospital. Authorities said Mulumba Kazigo broke into the Westbury residence, repeatedly beat his father with a bat and then cut his father's throat with a knife while he slept Wednesday morning.
Kazigo was reported missing on Thursday when he did not show up for his shift at the hospital. Police said yesterday that he also did not respond to a page from the hospital Wednesday evening, but that this was not uncommon for on-call surgeons.
Mulumba Kazigo was arrested Friday on second-degree attempted murder and assault charges after neighbors reported seeing a man fitting his description driving one of the family's cars from his father's Westbury home on Wednesday, police said.
After talking with his family, Kazigo led police to his father's unburied remai ns in a wooded area near the Muscoot reservoir Saturday between 4 and 5 a.m., and confessed in writing and video to the murder, Det. Lt. Dennis Farrell of the Nassau Homicide Squad said.
The younger Kazigo was a graduate student in history at the University at Albany, according to attorney Francis Ssekandi, a family friend who grew up in Uganda with Joseph Kazigo and represented the son at his arraignment yesterday. At the time of his arrest, Kazigo was living at his parents' home and working as an assistant at a nearby summer camp, Ssekandi said.
"There may have been an argument recently," Farrell said, adding that tensions between father and son had been "building for a number of years." He declined to say what had spurred the son's problems with his father, who was known as a strict man devoted to traditional values of his native Uganda.
Eyes drooping, Mulumba Kazigo stared stoicly ahead as he was escorted yesterday from Nassau police headquarters. He paused briefly before entering a police vehicle and looked at the swarm of reporters.
"I have no comment," he said in a quiet voice.
At First District Court in Hempstead, Kazigo pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail.
Karoli Ssemogerere, one of Mulumba Kazigo's attorneys, described his client as having a "gentle demeanor, quiet, unassuming. Obviously, we are shocked."
Kazigo's lawyers argued that their client needed a psychiatric evaluation and had not been granted access to legal counsel despite numerous requests while in police custody until 1 a.m. yesterday morning, claims that Assistant District Attorney Frank Schroeder denied.
Nakizito Kazigo, one of the suspect's sisters, said in court that her brother was on Effexor XR, an anti-depressant, and that it was "important that he be on it."
There was no indication yesterday that the drug had played a role in the killing, but the drug's side effects can include hostility, worsening de pression and suicidal thoughts, according to Healthwise, a nonprofit organization. There have been reports throughout the nation of people who allegedly committed violent crimes while on the drug, including a Maryland teen who poisoned his best friend and is serving a life sentence.
The drug's manufacturer, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc., warns on its Web site that patients should be "watched for becoming agitated, irritable, hostile, impulsive or restless."
The sister was accompanied by her husband and one of her five brothers at the arraignment. Nakizito Kazigo and her brother showed no visible emotion as Schroeder described how Mulumba Kazigo took days to buy different weapons and bludgeoned his father in his Westbury apartment.
"This crime and its brutality are only by its premeditation and attempts to cover up the crime," Schroeder said, adding that the suspect gave an "extensive confession" in writing and video.
Schroeder also denied claims by Mulumba Ka zigo's attorneys that the suspect was refused access to an attorney before making the confession. "I don't think the attorney really knows what he was talking about," Schroeder said outside the courthouse. "The defendant never requested a lawyer."
Ssemogerere said a funeral is being planned for Wednesday and that Joseph Kazigo's remains will then be sent back to Uganda. He said that the family was "obviously saddened. They're trying to find themselves."
At the Kazigos' Westchester home, a steady stream of family and friends visited yesterday to offer support and comfort.
A woman who answered the door there declined to comment. A woman identified by a family friend as Kazigo's daughter, Nakizito, 32, a doctor and West Point graduate who lives in Honolulu, said nothing as she arrived home from her brother's arraignment.
"It's totally incomprehensible," said Dr. Sam Kigongo, a surgeon who had worked with Kazigo at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx and is also U gandan, after pulling up in the family's driveway.
Another friend who declined to give her name shook her head when asked if she had ever seen any tension between the Kazigos and their children.
"They're such a good family," she said. "I remember them all playing in the backyard as kids; they were the most well-behaved children you ever saw."Long Island
Doctor recalled as "strict," and "a good father"
BY JENNIFER SMITH AND KARLA SCHUSTER
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August 29, 2005
A well-known figure among the local Ugandan community, Dr. Joseph Kazigo was a deeply traditional man who lived in the U.S. for more than 40 years but kept close ties to the homeland he left as a young student.
Kazigo was a member of Uganda's largest ethnic group, the Baganda, whose clans make up the Buganda kingdom, which was incorporated into independent Uganda in 1962."He was a traditionalist, very keen on Buganda culture and the importance of proper behavior," such as deference to one's elders, said Joseph Senyonjo, a friend and official with Ggwanga Mujje, a New York and New Jersey-based Ugandan cultural group that Kazigo founded in 1994.
While born here, Kazigo's children also spoke Luganda, the Bantu language of the Baganda people, and were raised in a home that was conservative even by traditional Ugandan standards, Senyonjo said.
"Young people kneel when addressing their elders and address them as sir or madam ... never with their first name," Senyonjo said. "That kind of thing Dr. Kazigo was very strict about."
Kazigo claimed royal lineage and had served as a representative to the Bugandan monarch [who does not play a political role in Uganda's government], said one of his son's attorneys, Karoli Ssemogerere.
The Westchester surgeon also served as chairman for a New York branch of a Ugan dan political party that for years was banned by the national government, Senyonjo said.
Kazigo spent thousands of his own dollars to advance Ggwanga Mujje's causes -- development projects such as well-drilling in rural areas and a scholarship fund for children orphaned by AIDS -- in his home country, Senyonjo said. He also worked to promote awareness of Ugandan culture among those living outside its borders.
Francis Ssekandi, who attended high school with Joseph Kazigo in Uganda and represented the younger Kazigo at his arraignment yesterday, described the elder Kazigo as a devout Catholic and devoted family man. "He was a very good Christian and everybody knows he was a very good father," Ssekandi said.
Family friends said Kazigo put a premium on education, and had high expectations for his seven children and was exceedingly proud of their achievements.
"He was strict, not just as a father, but in his professional life as well," said Dr. Sam Kigongo , a surgeon who once worked with Kazigo at another hospital. "He never cut corners ... the most striking thing about him was his discipline and his exceptional amount of drive."
Staff writer Christine Armario contributed to this story.Doctor was pillar in the community
BY CYNTHIA DANIELS AND THERESA VARGAS
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STAFF WRITERS
August 28, 2005
When Joseph Matovu met Joseph Kazigo more than 25 years ago, Kazigo was the type of man others admired -- a hard-working surgeon with impeccable manners who was very family-oriented.
And over the years, Matovu said, Kazigo, a husband and father of seven, did not change."He was a very cultural person, very conservative, very principled, highly respected, very well-educated and an outstanding surgeon," Matovu said of Kazigo, 67, who police said yesterday was killed by his son. "He's the kind of person that you rarely meet. We wish we had a lot of those people in the world."
Ten years ago, Kazigo, Matovu and others from Uganda formed Ggwanga Mujje New York/New Jersey Inc., a nonprofit cultural organization. The group, he said, promotes traditions from the Ugandan region of Buganda and raises money to help educate and care for Ugandan children orphaned by AIDS.
Kazigo was the organization's first president, guiding it through its first five years while caring for his family and working at both Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx, and New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Matovu said.
"This was a priority to him," Matovu, current chairman of the organization, s aid. "To make sure people don't forget their culture, their ethnic origin."
Dr. Joan McInerney, chairwoman of the department of emergency medicine at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, said Kazigo also would take a few weeks every year to go to Uganda.
While she hired Kazigo in 1998, McInerney said their paths already had crossed in the '70s at what is now Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in the Bronx.
Kazigo was chief resident of surgery.
"I was very impressed with him," McInerney said. "He was very thorough, compassionate, caring."
The description goes on: "serious, articulate, honest, smart."
Even though Kazigo was shorter than 5-foot-5, "he was 10 feet tall," McInerney and others said.
"I certainly lost a good friend. I always respected him for standing up for what's right," she said. "I will miss him."
Kazigo came to NUMC to practice emergency medicine and brought with him a high standard for patient care, inc luding insisting patients received specialist care when needed.
There, as one of about six emergency room surgeons, he worked on everything from abdominal pain to stab wounds.
And in the midst of his work, Matovu said, Kazigo "never failed to jog every morning."
Neighbors in Westbury, where he rented an apartment, described him as a man who looked and moved at the pace of someone 20 years younger.
In May, he participated in the annual Reckson Long Island Half-Marathon at Eisenhower Park, completing the 13.1-mile half-marathon in two hours, 27 minutes and 17 seconds, according to a race results Web site.
"He was always running," said neighbor Christine Prinz. "It could be 90-something degrees outside and he'd be running."
In those jogs that could stretch for hours, she said, he would wave hi and bye.
"He just seemed like a real nice guy," she said.
Members of Ggwanga Mujje were to meet last night at Kazigo's house to plan a Dec ember fundraiser for the children of Uganda.
The members still traveled to his home in Lincolndale, except now to comfort Kazigo's family.
"He was a pillar in the community and now we've lost him," Matovu said. "The family is devastated and so is the community. We don't know how to move from here. It's terrible."Long Island
Grim end in search for missing NUMC doctor
Surgeons body is found close to his Westchester home; his son has been charged in his murder
BY THERESA VARGAS and JEROME BURDI
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Theresa Vargas is a staff writer, and Jerome Burdi is a freelance writer. Staff writer Cynthia Daniels also contributed to this story.
August 27, 2005, 10:12 PM EDT
The police search for surgeon Joseph Kazigo started in a disheveled Westbury apartment Thursday and ended yesterday afternoon next to a Westchester reservoir.
Kazigo's son, Mulumba Kazigo, 26, is charged with killing the 67-year-old and dumping his body, Nassau police said.
Investigators found the body in a wooded area near Muscoot reservoir in the town of Lewisboro yesterday, a day after arresting Mulumba Kazigo on an attempted murder charge. Immediately after the discovery, police upgraded the charge to second-degree murder.
Kazigo will be arraigned today at First District Court in Hempstead, said police, who declined to discuss details.
Police said Kazigo, one of seven children, forced his way into his father's second-floor rental apartment in Westbury between Wednesday and Thursday morning and repeatedly hit him with a blunt object.
"There were clear indications that some type of violent assault had taken place at that location," homicide Det. Lt. Dennis Farrell said at State Police barracks in Somers.
The glass on the back door was broken and blood was splattered in the apartment, the landlord's son, Daniel Daly, said yesterday.
"I don't see ho w anyone could do this to him," Daly said. "He was a very gentle man."
Kazigo, an emergency room surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, stayed at the apartment after hospital shifts but shared a residence in Lincolndale with his wife, Caroline, and children, including Mulumba. Yesterday, relatives at the home declined to comment.
Neighbor Beth Vinberg described the Kazigo family as private but personable and very close. "You can't say anybody could see this coming," she said.
Those who knew Joseph Kazigo locally didn't fail to see the tragic irony in his death. The surgeon who spent his life healing others, including many trauma patients, died a traumatic death.
"It's heartbreaking for me," said Angel Heredia, who works the emergency room front desk. "He's a good doctor. He's the best."
Heredia buried his face in his hands. He would often translate for the Uganda-born Kazigo when Spanish-speaking patients were treated. He remembers Kazigo in h is green scrubs and white overcoat filling out paperwork, or taking charge in the trauma room, a calming force amid chaos.
"We are shocked and grieving at the loss of a very significant member of the medical staff and the Nassau University Medical Center family," hospital spokeswoman Shelley Lotenberg said. "We offer our condolences and prayers to his family in the United States and Uganda."
Kazigo's colleagues became concerned when he didn't show up for work Thursday and called police and requested they check to see if the doctor was OK.
They grew increasingly worried when they heard police had found blood at the scene.
"He was always on time. He would always show up for the shift," said Dr. Joan McInerney, who chairs the department of emergency medicine at the hospital. She described a somber mood these past few days. "People are really distressed, I think the whole medical staff is."
She said Kazigo often talked about his family and was proud of his children.
Both he and his son were avid runners, with the younger Kazigo participating in several local races as a member of the Albany Running Exchange last year. While a student at the University at Albany, Mulumba Kazigo was also a member of the African Student Association, a group created to promote friendship and mutual understanding among African students.
Often the elder Kazigo would be seen running through his Pleasant Avenue neighborhood in Westbury. Neighbors said they were stunned no one heard the struggle.
"I'm surprised there wasn't more noise," said next-door neighbor Pat Carlino, adding Kazigo was extremely fit for a 67-year-old. "He was not a feeble person. This was a strong man."======
The murder suspect in Dr. Kazigo's murder was apparently taking the antidepressant Effexor XR. Some side effects & adverse reactions to Effexor XR are discussed at the websites below.etc.
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