'She didn't move or breathe'
2008-11-21 22:11
Pretoria - A woman told the Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Friday that when she examined her niece's baby in a bucket, the child did not move or breathe.
Rosinah Show, 47, said she put her hand in the bucket and lifted the baby's face, but it was dead.
Show and her niece, Cecilia Seale, 34, of Mamelodi West, on Friday took the stand in the murder case against them.
They earlier pleaded not guilty to a charge of murdering Seale's newborn baby girl by drowning her in a bucket or by means unknown to the State.
The two accused pleaded guilty to a charge of concealment of birth.
Seale first testified that she knew she was pregnant, but she did not know by how many months, as she had not been to a doctor.
In July last year she woke up and needed to urinate.
As the toilet was occupied, she took a bucket to her room and sat on top of it.
"But the baby came out," Seale said.
According to Seale, the child appeared dead and she sent someone to call her aunt.
Show said when she came to the room, Seale was sitting on the bucket. As the younger woman got up, the aunt saw the baby in the bucket.
Realising that the child was not moving, she lifted the baby's face.
"It made no movement or sound," she testified.
The women covered the bucket with the baby inside and left it until the next morning. They then dug a hole behind a shack in the yard where they buried the baby girl.
The trial will continue on January 28.
- SAPA