Windhoek High Court acting judge Orben Sibeya this week said he took the cumulative effect of the two convictions into account when he sentenced a man, employed as a gardener at the house of his victim, to 32 years imprisonment.
Sibeya convicted Unaaro Mbemukenga (28) of murder over the gruesome killing and robbery of 78-year-old Manfred Karl Hartmann, a pensioner from Germany who retired to Swakopmund.
The murder and robbery took place on 17 August 2017.
He pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial and told the court he did not kill or rob anyone.
According to the State, the accused was employed by Hartmann as a gardener and that the accused attacked Hartmann with a brick and then bound his hands behind his back, strangling him with an electric wire that was fastened to a washbasin in an outside toilet at the deceased’s residence. The deceased died as a result of strangulation.
Mbemukenga also robbed the deceased of N$1 500 in cash, a laptop, two cell phones, clothes and beddings, the judge found.
Mbemukenga was arrested about two days after the incident in Outjo, where he was shot in the leg for trying to evade arrest.
Sibeya sentenced Mbemukenga to 32 years on the murder conviction and ten years on the robbery conviction but ordered the sentences to run concurrently.
“Due to the cumulative effect of the sentences if they are to be served consecutively, I order that they run concurrently,” the judge said before he passed the sentence.
According to him, the murder was premeditated and carefully planned and executed, and Mbemukenga deserved to be removed from society for a very long time.
Sibeya said there is no dignified manner in which to take a life, but how Mbemukenga brought the life of his victim to nought was apprehensible and brutal.
“Not only did he break into the house of a person that offered him employment but he severely abused the trust that was placed in him,” the judge said.
“He bit the hand that fed him.”
Sibeya called the actions of Mbemukenga as deserving on condemnation in the strongest of terms and said he must be punished to deter himself and would-be offenders.
He went on to say that convicted persons must be sentenced in proportion to the crimes committed and society should not be disappointed; however, punishment should also not destroy a convicted person.
According to Sibeya, punishment must fit the crime and the criminal, be fair to society and be blended with a measure of mercy but should not be lenient that society will take the law into their own hands.
He found that the murder and robbery were committed with the same aim in mind, concluding that the sentences on the offences should be served simultaneously.
The State was represented by Advocate Cliff Lutibezi and Mbemukenga by Vernon Lutibezi on instructions of Legal Aid. – rrouth@nepc.com.na