Johannesburg - The sole survivor of a horrific triple family murder in Katlehong is yet to be told that her younger sister and cousin won’t be coming home.
On Friday, 22-year-old Nthabiseng Letswalo returned to her mother Thembi Letswalo’s house after being admitted to hospital with severe stab wounds. Heavily sedated she just managed to walk around the house but remained oblivious to her surroundings, also completely in the dark about the death of her sister and cousin.
“We don’t know what to tell her. All she keeps asking is where Lerato and Priska are. She wants to find out why they won’t come home to see her,” said her older sister, Dimakatso Mathibela, speaking to the Saturday Star.
“All we can do for now is tell her that they are in ICU and the doctors won’t let us see them.”
Mathibela said her 18-year-old sister Lerato Letswalo, her 23-year-old cousin Priska Movit and Priska’s 6-month-old baby Bokamoso Movit were allegedly strangled to death by their cousins after they came to visit the family that day. Mathibela recounted the gruesome scene that greeted her mom and sister, Nthabiseng when they arrived home from work on Thursday. Nthabiseng had accompanied her mom to work that day. Mathibela’s cousins arrived asking for something to eat but there was nothing in the house.
Thembi Letswalo gave one of her nephews R20 to buy bread. After that the 52-year-old woman left the property to go to work.
At work she felt uneasy and called home to check on her daughters. They told her that the cousins had not left and were still there.
To get the cousins to leave, Mathibela said her mother told Priska and Lerato to ask them to take a lunchbox to her. The pair did that but returned to the house in the afternoon.
When Thembi and Nthabiseng arrived from work the house was locked. They knocked but got no response.
Mathibela said as her mother went to retrieve her handbag and other things from her car, her sister Nthabiseng managed to get into the house. But when Thembi tried the door it was locked.
“I went next door to ask the neighbours to come help me,” Thembi said.
While there Mathibela said Thembi saw Nthabiseng emerge from the house, bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds. She was holding a metal rod.
Screaming, she said her cousins were trying to kill her.
Before she collapsed Nthabiseng managed to tell her mother that the two cousins had assaulted her and stabbed her repeatedly.
It later emerged that she had lay on the floor pretending to be dead and overheard them speaking among themselves, wondering if they had killed her.
When they thought she was no longer alive, they got ready to leave. That’s when she got up, picked up the metal rod they had hit her with and tried to retaliate by hitting one of the cousins before fleeing the house.
The men fled, jumping over a neighbour’s wall to get away with laptops and other items from the house. They were apprehended by community members who turned on the men and beat them up. They were subsequently taken into custody.
A panicked Thembi ran into the house, screaming Priska and Lerato’s names.
She went from room to room until she discovered them dead in the bathroom.
Her grandson was floating in bath water.
Mathibela said there was no blood on Priska, Lerato or Bokamoso.
According to Ekurhuleni Disaster and Emergency Management Services, the attackers strangled the girls and the baby, then placed them in a bath full of boiling water.
The two men, aged 18 and 24, are in a serious condition in hospital under police watch.
“This has caused a crack in the family. We are torn. We will never be the same. We (the family) no longer trust each other,” Mathibela said.
She said her sister Lerato, the youngest of the family, was supposed to start her first year at the University of Johannesburg next year while Priska was supposed to have continued with her studies and take care of her baby which she saw only on weekends. Nthabiseng is a computer science student at the Vaal University of Technology.
The family is yet to make funeral arrangements.
Saturday Star
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