WINDHOEK – Windhoek High Court Acting Judge Alfred Siboleka on Wednesday last week convicted double murder accused, Petrus Paai of all charges.
The conviction took place at the Windhoek Correctional Facility.
Paai faced two murder counts, one count of robbery with aggravating circumstances and one count of defeating or obstructing the course of justice for hiding the knives he used in the murders.
He was charged on the first murder count for killing Frederick Afrikaner on 1 August 2015 and the second murder count for killing Kapenaweholenge Heliki Hamutenya on 11 June 2016.
Both incidents occurred in Gobabis.
The robbery charge emanated from him taking N$100 from the shirt pocket of the dying Hamutenya.
According to Judge Siboleka, the version of the accused regarding the first murder count is not on at all.
“It is credibly clear from the various eyewitnesses who told the court how the accused relentlessly embarked on a clearly thought through attack on an unarmed innocent deceased by continuously running, chasing, storming, charging and lashing out vicious knife blows at him,” the judge said and continued: “In this process, the deceased was dodging and moving backwards telling the accused to leave him alone as he has done nothing to him to warrant such an attack.”
The judge said that it is his considered view that the accused was determined to get at the deceased, which he eventually succeeded in doing.
With regards to the second murder count, the judge said the version of the accused that the deceased, Hamutenya, while holding an open knife grabbed him on the neck so firm that he could not breath and that he was unable to free himself from that grip with his bare hands other than by way of stabbing him is untrue.
According to the judge, corroborated evidence has shown that it was only the accused who had a knife.
He said that the accused’s account of events on this count is false beyond reasonable doubt.
The judge recounted the testimony of State witnesses that saw the accused reach over and took a N$100 note from the already defenseless fatally stabbed and dying victim’s pocket.
“I therefore finds that the accused robbed the deceased accordingly,” the judge stated.
With regards to the charge of defeating or obstructing the course of justice, Judge Siboleka said he looked at it closely.
The judge said the submissions of the State that the knife was in the pocket of the accused before the stabbings was not in dispute and it is in fact what the accused himself placed on record in his evidence in chief.
According to Judge Siboleka, after fatally wounding the deceased with the said knife, he did not put it back in his pocket from where he took it, but placed it in a schoolbag and gave it to someone else who handed it to his mother-in-law who hid it in a drum behind her house.
This channel of custody generated by the accused himself after using the said knife, credibly shows a mindset to conceal it from the police, hence they were unable to find it at the scene of crime, said the judge
Titus Mbaeva represents Paai on instructions of Legal Aid while the prosecution is represented by Advocate Ethel Ndlovu.