Windhoek – September 5 this year is the date which could be the start of what could determine the fate of Andre Frieda Castro Dausab, when his trial is scheduled to begin in the Windhoek High Court before Judge Naomi Shivute.
Dausab will go on trial for the murder of his trainee pastor girlfriend whose throat he slit at her flat at the United Lutheran Church Paulinum College in Pioneers Park.
Dausab has already indicated to the court he will plead not guilty due to non-pathological criminal incapacity and is disputing he was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions during the commission of the offence.
According to his state-funded lawyer Bronwell Uirab his client will remain silent, but they will base their defence on non-pathological criminal incapacity, meaning he was not aware of his actions at the time.
He further said Dausab will undergo further psychiatric observation by a private psychiatrist.
According to Uirab they do not dispute the entirety of the report submitted by the state mental hospital, but only the second part that claims Dausab was aware of what he was doing.
Dausab is charged with the brutal stabbing of 33-year-old Gofaone Motlamme, who was a third year student at Paulinum College. She was stabbed several times in the chest and arms before the killer struck the fatal blow in the neck and then slit her throat in her room at the campus in Pioneers Park, Extension One on February 22, 2014.
During a bail hearing in the magistrate’s court Dausab asked the magistrate to allow him to go to Botswana to ask forgiveness from the family of the deceased.
At the time he told the magistrate: “I have thousands of thoughts of suicide, I want to go to Botswana to ask for forgiveness.”
He was ordered to undergo observation to determine his mental state and was found fit to be tried.
According to the charge sheet, the deceased and Dausab were involved in an intimate or romantic relationship.
On the Saturday when the incident took place the deceased and Dausab were together at her flat on the seminary’s premises in Erasmus Street in Windhoek when an argument erupted between them and he stabbed her at least 25 times all over her body.
Motlamme allegedly did not die immediately, but after a while due to her injuries.