n Roland Routh
Windhoek – Zenobia Seas who is said to have killed her biological daughter in Swakopmund and then tried to burn her car, with the body of the young girl inside the vehicle, is fit to stand trial and follow the proceedings, a report by psychiatrist Reinhardt Sieberhagen has concluded.
Deputy Prosecutor General, Advocate Antonia Verhoef, submitted the report into the court records and also informed High Court Judge Christi Liebenberg that Seas was allocated a bed at the Windhoek Central Hospital’s wing for mental patients for her mental observation.
The judge had ordered Sieberhagen to evaluate Seas to determine her ability to understand court proceedings and her ability to put up a proper defence, and that the state psychiatrist must determine whether she was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions when she committed the alleged crime.
Seas allegedly suffocated three-year-old Ava Owoses on a beach near Mile 108 on September 26, 2016 before trying to commit suicide by burning herself and the child’s body in her car.
She was discovered after her mobile phone was tracked to the scene.
She faces a charge of murder read with the provisions of the Combating of Domestic Violence Act and defeating or obstructing, or attempting to defeat or obstruct, the course of justice. Seas was held in Walvis Bay previously and will now be transferred to the Klein Windhoek Police Station, as the Windhoek Correctional Service trial-awaiting section does not cater for female inmates.
According to the indictment, Seas picked up her daughter from a day care facility in Mondesa in Swakopmund and drove with her to the area of ‘Blare’ in Henties Bay where she killed the child by smothering/suffocating her. The child died at the scene due to asphyxia. She then contacted various witnesses informing them that she killed the child, the indictment reads.
It is further states that Seas then “set alight the deceased’s blanket and attempted to set alight the motor vehicle with the deceased inside in an attempt to frustrate or interfere with police investigations; conceal the death of the deceased and protect her from being prosecuted for a crime”.