'Please leave my dad's things'

2008-01-29 09:02

Magdel Fourie

Pretoria - A live-in domestic worker, who was locked into a cupboard by a robber, heard how he also forced her employer's five-year-old daughter into a cupboard.

She was able to free the frightened child only half an hour later. There were marks on her throat and her chest was stained by blood.

This was how Lifina Mweli, who is still employed by a family in Senderwood, testified in the Johannesburg High Court on Monday about the day in September last year when she and the girl were overpowered by a robber.

David Matladi, 36, from Primrose, appeared in court on charges of attempted murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, and the illegal possession of a firearm.

Ordered to lie down

Mweli testified in detail how Matladi arrived at her employer's house on March 22, pretending he had to do tiling in the bathroom.

Shortly after Mweli, accompanied by the child, took him to the bathroom in the main bedroom, he turned around and ordered them to lie down on the floor.

He tied Mweli's hands and strangled her from behind when she tried to free herself.

"I was unable to breathe or scream,"she said and then testified how she could feel the muzzle of a gun in her neck.

After he gagged her with a shirt from the laundry basket, he took a safe from her employer's wardrobe and put it inside a bag.

The child, who sat crying on her parents' bed, begged them to "please leave my dad's things".

"Where are you taking my dad's things?" she pleaded.

Minutes later Mweli was forced into the cupboard and locked up.

From the darkness of the cupboard she heard how the next cupboard's door was opened and how the child was ordered to get in, she testified.

Eventually it became quiet and Mweli managed to open the cupboard door to free the girl.

"There were clear marks on her neck. The dress she was wearing had bloodstains all over it. When I asked her what they had done to her, she answered: "He strangled me". The case continues on Tuesday.

- Beeld