2017-08-15Staff Report 2 Roland Routh Windhoek-The State has closed its case in a trial involving a Gobabis resident accused of murdering his live-in girlfriend and mother of his minor child by stabbing her once in the chest at their common home in the Epako location during the late evening of September 3, 2013. Erwin Tebele, 31, will take the stand today to testify in his own defence after State Advocate Felisitas Shikerete-Vendura, told Judge Dinah Usiku she had produced her last witness after Inspector Theofelus Gariseb, who did the pointing out of the crime scene, took the stand yesterday. According to Gariseb, he was asked by the investigating officer in the matter to conduct the pointing out of the crime scene with Tebele. During the pointing out, he said, Tebele told him that he had stabbed the deceased, but that his intention was not to kill her, only cause injury. Gariseb told the court that at no stage during the pointing out did Tebele mention to him that he had stabbed the deceased in self defense or that the deceased stabbed him twice on his left arm. In fact, Gariseb said when he asked the accused about injuries he observed on the left arm of the accused, he was told that the injuries were the result of a fight he was involved in the previous Friday. According to the State, Tebele killed Nina Katjatenja with one stab wound to the chest after a quarrel ensued between them. He claimed she was accidentally stabbed during a struggle for the knife. His state-funded lawyer, Mbanga Siyomunji, told the court his client claims self-defense, as he was allegedly defending himself from the deceased when she was killed. He said his client was stabbed twice on the left arm with the same knife by the deceased and that while he was trying to wrestle the knife away from her she was stabbed. Siyomunji further told the court that the accused’s version is that he arrived late on that fateful evening and the deceased started to quarrel with him about his whereabouts earlier that night and took a knife, with which she stabbed him. According to Tebele, he then tried to take the knife from the deceased and in the process she was stabbed accidentally. Siyomunji said his client would testify that he did not intend to stab the deceased or to cause her death and that he deeply regrets what happened. 2017-08-15Staff Report 2
