MANCHESTER, NH – George Mbungu goes over the details he knows, which are few. He revisits the timeline that haunts him and, ultimately, leads him back to the same sad truth: His little brother Thamba is gone and, no matter how many things might have gone differently in the past year, it doesn’t help to dwell there.
“Death is death,” says George, 28, a 2013 Central High School graduate who now lives in Iowa. He flew back to his family’s home in Manchester to mourn the death of his youngest brother, Thamba Mbungu, whose body was found Oct. 24 at Derryfield Park.
George returned to his life in Iowa last weekend with no answers and no idea if police are close to making an arrest. The family has had no updates, and no arrests have been made.
“We want to know exactly what happened. We’re in the dark,” said George. “If they haven’t come to a conclusion, at least tell us a little of what they have. Right now they should know something,” George says. Authorities have his brother’s cell phone and all the data that goes with it, including GPS information and his final phone calls and messages.
“We heard that he was hit with four bullets in the back and one that grazed his face,” says George, running a finger across his right cheek. “We heard that the car was shot up. We don’t know where the car is now, or where it was found. We gave them all the information we know, but most of it is speculation,” street names of acquaintances and other bits and pieces that have come from outside law enforcement.
What’s been said officially was released in a memo on Oct. 25 by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella. The body of Thamba Mbungu, 20, was found at Derryfield Park on the morning of October 24. An autopsy revealed his death was caused by a gunshot wound to the back, and that the manner of death is homicide.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley, who is managing the case, said his office is assisting police detectives.
“I’m sure it’s disheartening to the family,” said Hinckley earlier this week, regarding the fact that there has been no arrest. “I understand they may be upset. Some cases never result in an arrest.”
When asked about what the family has heard, about the number of gunshot wounds found on Thamba’s body, Hinckley said, “there may have been other wounds, but the death certificate says the cause of his death was a singular gunshot wound to the back, and that is accurate.”
Hinckley said his office always shares as much information with a family as they can without interfering with the integrity of an investigation. Any family who has been through it knows that equates to little more than the public finds out from news reports.
“We are careful not to share too much,” Hinckley said. “We can only go where the evidence takes us. If it leads us to an arrest, that’s what we will do. I can understand where the family might have concerns when an arrest is not made immediately.”
Hinckley said gathering evidence and following tips and leads takes time and is crucial to building a powerful case so that once an arrest is made, it sticks.
“One example is the Charabaty case,” said Hinckley, referring to the murder of Zakhia Charabaty, 52, of Manchester. He was reported missing by his family on March 14, 2020. His remains were found four months later in Methuen, Mass. However, an arrest was not made in that case until almost 18 months after Charabaty’s disappearance when, on Oct. 21, 2021, Anderson Pereira was apprehended by U.S. Marshals in Florida and charged with first-degree murder and falsification of physical evidence.
There are other open cases in Manchester Police Department’s unsolved murder file that linger without resolution, leaving those families without closure.
Manchester Police Department’s Crimeline tip page features four unsolved murders, including Denise Robert, who was shot and killed August 29, 2015, on Ray Street; Mindy West, whose body was found October 4, 1998, off Huse Road with a rope around her neck; Walter Page, whose body was recovered after a fire on December 14, 1995, at his Walnut Hill Avenue home. An autopsy revealed he had been stabbed several times causing his death; and Rita Roy who was stabbed to death May 20, 1991, at the Center of NH parking garage on Elm Street.
Pulled between two worlds
George Mbungu believes that life for his youngest brother may have begun to unravel in early 2020.
“To my knowledge that was the tipping point,” says George, who explains that Thamba, a talented soccer player whose only dream was to play professionally, broke his ankle and was ineligible to tryout or be drafted to the NH Revolution after spending time as part of the NH Revolution Academy.
“He was very disappointed. To him, it almost felt like his dreams were shattered. His mind was focused on that one opportunity. He had to pick himself up and dust off and start a new battle, and that’s what he did,” says George. This is where some of the family’s frustration comes from. Both George and his older brother, Joel, tried to convince Thamba to follow in their footsteps down another route, by going to college or joining the Air Force, which they both had done.
“Thamba wasn’t interested in school – all he wanted was to play professional soccer,” says George. He wonders if someone outside of the family, perhaps a mentor or a coach, could have convinced Thamba to seek another path to reach his dreams.
Earlier this year Thamba’s family got him to move to Iowa where he also has a sister, to get him away from Manchester where it seemed Thamba was beginning to fall in with a bad crowd. He returned to Manchester in September.
“We tried to get him established there. We were afraid for his life. At first, he accepted it. It seems like when he was with us he was a different person – like he was pulled between two worlds. He got a job in Iowa and was busting his bum, working overtime. But ultimately he refused to stay. He said it was boring and there was nothing to do – and there really wasn’t, in a good way. It’s different there. It’s more isolated, there aren’t people hanging out on the streets. We hoped that would help him stay focused.”
In the end, George says the family was always ready to support Thamba’s dreams; whatever it would take to help him have a shot playing professional soccer, they were there for him.
Adjusting to a new life in Manchester
Thamba arrived in Manchester with his family at the age of 10, the youngest of a large family that had fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Our father was from the capital city and was moved to the Katanga Province because he was a civil engineer. When war broke out in 1997 we tried not to flee but eventually, things got so bad we had to get out,” George said. They ended up living as refugees in Tanzania for a total of 12 years. Thamba was born there, in 2001. Finally, the family was able to leave Africa in 2011 and start a new life in Manchester, where they understood the American dream of education and employment to be the keys to success.
“We were happy to have a permanent life, a future,” says George. “I don’t regret coming to this country. There are so many opportunities. But it’s also a difficult atmosphere to adjust to, where kids have to learn to navigate it and if you don’t, you’ll get lost in the system. For me, it worked. I came here at 16. I knew exactly what I wanted – a better life. I knew I wasn’t going to get involved with the wrong crowd. But for the younger kids, they don’t yet know and too many times they assimilate to the streets, the music, the culture, the gangs.”
Thamba’s athleticism on the soccer field was quickly recognized and acknowledged among his new American peers. While in middle school Thamba “played up” with the older kids, because he needed the challenge. Throughout his high school years, Thamba excelled at the sport. He attended three years at Memorial but eventually transferred to Central where he felt the competition would be better for him, says George. His senior year Thamba was named 2019 High School Player of the Year for New Hampshire. During that time he also played for the Revolution Youth Team, funded by the New England Revolution, a professional soccer club owned by Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots.
Thamba believed he was on a clear path to success as a professional athlete.
After graduation, his peers and teammates moved on. And because Thamba didn’t want to go to college, when things fell through with the Revolution team and his injury, he found himself alone and vulnerable to the influence of others, says George.
“He went from hanging out with his soccer teammates to these guys who had nothing to do with anything,” George says. He said many of those who Thamba kept company with of late didn’t seem to have day jobs, but plenty of time to come and go in nice cars, “with tinted windows,” he added.
In the months before he was murdered, Thamba was trying to find his place, post-high school. Raised in the church with a strong sense of God and family, at 20 Thamba was getting lost, says George. The firm discipline that benefitted his older siblings did not translate to the younger ones.
“Here you can’t spank a child to teach them discipline or right from wrong, and if you can’t establish that authority over your own child, your hands are tied. You can lose them – they won’t listen to you anymore,” George says.
Kids today need more mentors, whether they are getting the right messaging from home or church. “Temptation is out there,” George says.
“Thamba was the last born. We tried to give him freedom. When we saw he was struggling, we tried to talk sense into him. He had two brothers who were like recruiters. Had he gone into the military, things would have been different. We told him in life you have to have a ‘plan B’ because anything can happen. Having an education could have given him something to fall back on,” George says. “He seemed to hear us, but then, he started contradicting us.”
He knew his brother had lost his license at some point, but didn’t know the details. According to court records, Thamba was charged on Nov. 6, 2020, in Bow with “unlawful possession,” a misdemeanor which, by state statute, applies to anyone “under the age of 21 years who has in his or her possession any liquor or alcoholic beverage.” The court summary did not indicate what he possessed. He was fined $372 but defaulted on that, leading to an automatic suspension of his license. The fine was cleared in court records after his death.
Recently Thamba did finally make it to Africa, a giant step closer to the dream he thought had eluded him. However, he ran into red tape over his documents and had to return home. Still determined, he worked toward gathering money for a second trip.
“The second time in Africa they held him in Johannesburg Airport for a week and he missed his tryout,” says George who explains that although Thamba was Congolese, because he was born in Tanzania there was confusion over his documents, again.
“He was too late to try out but he did talk to the coach and showed them what he could do. They were interested and wanted him to come back and try out for the next session. Our sister tried appealing to them to let him just stay there but there was no one who financially could take care of his needs for that much time in Africa, so he came home a second time,” George said.
When he returned his family promised to help him financially get back to Africa a third time, in December, for his tryout. In the meantime, they wanted him to return to Iowa – away from Manchester, where trouble seemed to be closing in.
“We told him to get a job and save his money. We didn’t ask him for a dime,” George said. “And although he did get a job at a manufacturing company, after a few weeks we noticed he didn’t have a dollar in his pocket. We were worried again, about what he was doing and that he was getting into some trouble with the wrong people. We were in a rush to get him back to Iowa until he could return to Africa, and at first he accepted that idea, but then he changed his mind.”
And before Thamba could make that third trip to Africa for his shot at a career playing soccer, his life was cut short.
“What we suspect is that he was with the wrong people at the wrong time and place. Maybe someone was trying to get him to do something he didn’t want to do. We don’t know if it was a drive-by, or someone chased him down and he was running for his life when they shot him,” George says. “Maybe they shot him someplace else and dropped his body off.”
He says they found out about it when one of the people who Thamba had been hanging out with knocked on the door and said, ‘your brother is in deep trouble. He’s with the police.” And so a family member drove to the park and found his lifeless body.
“Thamba was a great kid. He spent his high school years improving himself so he could achieve his dreams. We all loved him. We were so proud of him,” George says. Now, there’s nothing left for the family in Manchester. They are in the process of selling their home and moving everyone to Iowa.
“It’s time to go. No good remains here for us. Don’t get me wrong – we love Manchester. This is where I grew up. This has been our home. But now, we live in fear,” George says. He mentions that shortly after Thamba’s death, someone broke a window at his brother’s apartment in Manchester while they were at the hospital for the birth of their child. It may be unrelated, says George, but nothing feels safe anymore.
“Maybe I’m exaggerating the threat, but what if he was getting involved with a gang?” George says. “What if they want retaliation for something – despite the fact we don’t know anything, it’s that fear that compels us to leave. The day they broke my brother’s window police sent a cruiser here, and it was parked outside for the day.”
With each day that passes, the need for answers grows stronger.
“We understand it takes time, but it’s a matter of connecting the dots to get the perpetrators. We know they shot him and walked away, and someone came back to check on him. We know that because someone took his picture and sent it to someone who knew Thamba at 5 or 6 a.m.,” says George. “There are a lot of clues, but no answers.”
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If you have any information or know any details that might assist police in solving this murder you can go to Manchester Crimeline’s anonymous tip form and leave the information there, or call 603-624-4040. You can then track the progress of your tip securely and if your tip leads to an arrest you may be eligible for a cash reward. Tipsters who testify at a trial in which the suspect is convicted are eligible for twice their original reward amount, up to $2,500.
