A Long Island man who beat his prominent doctor dad to death with a bat got 20 years in the slammer yesterday, despite his family’s pleas for mercy because the slain man was an abusive monster.
“If I could do this all over again and give his life back, I would gladly reverse what I did,” whispered Mulumba Kazigo, 26, who remained handcuffed throughout the sentencing. “But I cannot change what happened on that morning.”
Sitting in the audience at the Mineola courthouse, Mulumba’s siblings and widowed mother cried softly as he spoke.
For months, Mulumba’s family has pleaded with Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice to substantially reduce the plea deal he agreed to early last month for manslaughter.
They feel that Mulumba was acting only to defend his mom and six siblings from the brutal beatings administered for decades by their father, Dr. Zirabamuzaale “Joseph” Kazigo, 67, a surgeon.
Minutes after his brother Mulumba was led away to jail, Gabe Kazigo, 28, chastised his late father for creating the awful situation. “I hope you’re asking for forgiveness,” he said, speaking to reporters. “Because you could have been in a position to stop all of this, but you didn’t.”
In a letter sent to Rice, Mulumba’s sister, Dr. Nakizito Kazigo, a West Point graduate serving as a medical officer in Afghanistan, recalled “the sick way we were all beaten as we grew up, screaming, begging for mercy, running away only to be forced back for more or tied up so we couldn’t move.”
Gabe also said that their father once commanded his seven kids to remove their clothing and lie on the floor while he stepped on their heads and beat them bloody with a stick.
In August, Mulumba’s murderous resolve hardened when he learned that his father was habitually beating his wife, Caroline.
In August, Mulumba broke into the Westbury apartment where his father was sleeping on the couch. He beat his dad so savagely with a baseball bat that blood splattered on the ceiling, and the slit the dying man’s throat.
Mulumba dumped the body in a wooded lot in Somers, Westchester County.
Joseph, who moved to the United States from Uganda 40 years ago, was an emergency room surgeon at the Nassau University Medical Center. He lived with his family in Westchester, but used the Long Island apartment when working late shifts.