Life for killer gardeners
2013-01-12 09:48
Pretoria - Two gardeners who tied up and strangled their
elderly female employer in Pretoria North three years ago were on Friday
sentenced in the High Court in Pretoria to life imprisonment.
The body of Ida Allen, 60, was found under a trailer in
the yard of her Pretoria North home days after a neighbour last saw her alive.
She had been bound and gagged.
A plastic dog food bag was pulled over her head and tied
around her neck with a rope.
She had died of strangulation and suffocation.
Allen was a divorced pensioner who had no children and
lived alone.
In her younger years she had worked as a secretary for
former president PW Botha when he was still defence minister.
Judge Mmonoa Teffo sentenced Kelushi Petrus Hlatswayo,
27, of Groblersdal, and Vincent Tlou Nkgweng, 28, of Tembisa, to life and 20
years imprisonment for murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and the
illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
The police traced Allen’s cellphone to the accused, who
were also found with Allen’s firearms.
Teffo said it was severely aggravating that Allen was
murdered by people she trusted and who worked for her.
They knew she lived alone, had no children and had
planned her murder.
“The accused qualified to be the children of the
deceased. They are the people she could have gone to for help, but instead they
abused the trust she placed in them.
“Where would we live if we continue to be attacked by
people we trust and who work in our homes?”
Teffo rejected argument by the pair's lawyers that they
should get lesser sentences because they were raised by their mothers and
grandmothers.
Both also had young children to support.
She said neither of them had shown remorse and continued
to deny their involvement.
The inference could be drawn that they had kept Allen’s
firearms to commit other crimes, Teffo added.
Allen’s neighbour Rina Scheidle wiped away tears after
the two were sentenced.
She expressed relief the case was finally over, but said
it had been horrible to hear the murder described again.
Scheidle described Allen as a good neighbour obsessed
with security and who lived behind high fences.
She had been a champion shot in her younger days and had
always warned her neighbours not to enter her property without informing her
first.
- SAPA
