Alleged Cousin Killer Seeks Bail, Yet Again
Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday May 7, 2018 13:54
The 29-year-old Tsametse has been charged with the murder of his 16-year-old cousin, Arnold Ofentse in Mogoditshane on March 3, 2018.
The teenager stayed with the mother of the accused, Agnes Ofentse. The accused’s mother told The Monitor a day after the incident that the deceased was found dead under a huge Morula tree about 200 metres from Mogoditshane Senior Secondary School, hours after he left home having told his cousins that he was going to charge his phone at a neighbour’s house.
After his bail application was turned down by Broadhurst Chief Magistrate, Faith Ngandu early April, Tsametse engaged an attorney Nkosana Ngwenya and filed an urgent application for bail.
The bail hearing was postponed to this week as Ngwenya had not replied to papers from the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP). “We only received their replying affidavit late yesterday and could not file our replying paper because there was no one to receive our payment this morning,” Ngwenya said. Motumise then ordered that they file the papers on Monday and the application will be heard on Wednesday.
Before then, Tsametse appeared before the Broadhurst Magistrate last Thursday where a new mention date was set for June 15. The prosecutor was granted a plea for extension of remand warrant. The stand-in prosecutor told court that investigations were still ongoing.
Allegations are that Tsametse could have murdered his teen cousin to claim insurance from Botswana Life and Barclays bank where he had insured him.
Case tears family apart
The deceased’s brother Marks Ofentse, popularly known as ‘Kganka’ in the music industry said he hoped the accused is not granted bail. “He should face the music for what he did. His little sister has been hurling insults at me and does not care about the pain her brother caused me.
They brought my brother to Gaborone without my knowledge, and just after I made my intentions of taking him to stay with me he got killed,” he said angrily after the hearing was postponed. He said he has not been talking to his aunt Agnes for over five years. He said she would not even tell him that his brother was late as he found out from a newspaper three days later. John Ofentse, a family representative and uncle to the accused and the murdered, said the family was mad at Agnes and her son and did not want to see them ever again. “We are shocked, we are scared of them. We hope he will not be granted bail as we do not know what more he will do to us,” he said.
He broke down in tears when speaking of how the nephew was taken to Gaborone without his knowledge. “It breaks my heart when I remember that he was supposed to live with me but Agnes took him without my consent. It was agreed that he would come to stay with me in Palapye and I was surprised to learn that he was taken to Gaborone to stay with Agnes. We do not ever want to see her set her foot at our home in Tumasera,” he said.
Agnes would not speak to this publication. In a previous interview, she said her nephew who has lost his mother,
came to stay with her in December from Selebi-Phikwe where he was staying with her elder aunt.