Men get life for domestic's murder

2003-07-08 23:31

Johannesburg - A 20-year-old West Rand man, Thomas Johannes Booyens, and his friend Riaan Kleynhans were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday for the brutal murder of his mother's domestic worker.

Booyens and Kleynhans pleaded guilty to the murder of Tina Maebi as well as theft, while two other friends, Christo Taylor and Wilhelmus Muller, pleaded guilty to theft only. All were convicted according to their pleas.

Booyens and Kleynhans were also sentenced to six months imprisonment each for theft, while Taylor and Muller received conditionally suspended two-year sentences each for theft.

Drug money

Maebi was stabbed twice and her throat was slit in May 2001 when she tried to stop Booyens and his friends from ransacking Booyens's mother's house. They were trying to steal household goods to sell for drug money.

Judge David Makhoba found that Booyens and Kleynhans had "formed the intention to eliminate any resistance" to their plan to steal the household goods. Neither showed any remorse, Makhoba found.

He also said that drug addiction was not a license to kill and no reason for him to deviate from sentences usually imposed for crimes like murder and theft.

Evidence before the court was that the four had expected a good haul when they arrived at the house in Helikon Park, Randfontein with a car and trailer on May 23, 2001.

They have been using drugs since school days and all of them were under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime.

Makhoba said the drugs had not affected them to the extent that they did not know what they were doing.

Death sentence

Earlier this week Maebi's brother, Phillip, who is blind, testified in aggravation of sentence.

He said his sister, who was 26 at the time of her death, had not had much from life. She was single, had no children and was supporting both him and a blind niece. Phillip testified that had the death sentence still been in operation, he would have urged the court to impose that on his sister's murderers.

Booyens apologised to Phillip for killing his sister.

"The actions of the accused are not based on anything other than criminality and drugs," Makhoba said, taking into account that Tina Maebi was crawling away with a broken off knife blade in her lung when her throat was slit.

- SAPA