Murder accused awaits judgement

ITUMELENG TSHENYEGO
Correspondent | Thursday June 27, 2013 00:00

 

Tshireletso Kgonoga is alleged to have killed Resego Lesika Kopaditlhare of Palamakuwe lands in Shoshong by chopping her with an axe on March 8, 2011 at Palamakuwe lands.He testified in court that he was in a relationship with the accused for four years prior to the murder. He said while he was in a relationship with the accused, she was impregnated by another man in 2009. When asked by state prosecutor, Merapelo Mokgosi, why that did not prompt him to kill the deceased then in 2009, the accused said he loved her too much to hurt her.

'I accepted the pregnancy then because I could not imagine my life with anyone else but her. I also accepted it because I could not impregnate her since she was still at school,' he said.Kgonoga further said their relationship started to change at the beginning of 2011.'A man called Kabo came into the picture in 2011 and my relationship with Lesika was not the same. On the day of the offence, I caught Lesika with Kabo. When I confronted her, she insulted my parents and me.'The insults that she directed at my parents triggered my anger. I had no intention of killing her,' he said before the court.

Mokgosi, however, insisted that the accused manufactured Kabo because he wanted to exonerate himself from the offence. Mokgosi stated that in one of the admitted evidence by one Seabe Tlale, the deceased confided in Tlale that she wanted to end her relationship with the accused because he once assaulted her.'You went to the deceased's father's yard with the intention of killing her because on March 6, 2011 Tlale told you that she wanted to part ways with you. You then waited for her father to leave for Shoshong so that you could kill her,' she pointed out.

The accused then responded by saying that Tlale never told him that the deceased wanted to part ways. The axe that the accused used is said to have belonged to, Sesafeleng Kopaditlhare, the deceased's father.Mokgosi further went on to question the credibility of the accused's statement that he was in a relationship with the deceased since the deceased's father was not aware of the relationship.Judgement is set for February 24, 2014 and Justice Nyamadzabo ordered that he awaits judgement in police custody.