Durban - Shongweni pensioner, John Noble, 72, who was found lying dead in his garage with wire and a sticky bandage around his mouth, had fought for his life, the Durban High Court heard on Thursday.
Upstairs in their double-storey home, his wife, Hester, 68, an emphysema patient who depended on oxygen, was found strangled with her own oxygen tubing.
Candice Grobler, an advanced life support paramedic with ER24 Emergency Medical Care, who was called to the crime scene in November last year, told the court Noble’s hands were also tied behind his back.
When she went upstairs to the bedroom, she could not see his wife’s body at first.
The court previously heard that the gang that attacked them had ransacked the house on their smallholding and Grobler testified that a police officer had to point out where the body was to her, as “the house was a mess. I couldn’t see the body… All the contents of the cupboard and everything was lying on top of her”.
Details of the Nobles’ last moments were contained in a statement made by one of the three accused facing charges of murdering the couple.
They are also charged with robbery with aggravating circumstances.
After a trial-within-a-trial on the admissibility of the statement by Khulekani Wonderboy Mathonsi, 33, Judge Shyam Gyanda ruled on Wednesday that the statement could be admitted in evidence.
Mathonsi and his co-accused, Scelo Meshack Matabane, 30, and Siyabonga Innocent Xaba, 24, have denied the charges.
The contents of Mathonsi’s statement were read out in court by SAPS Lieutenant-Colonel Jason McGray, who recorded it and who said Mathonsi said he wanted to tell the truth to “get it off his shoulders.”
Mathonsi sat with his head bowed throughout the reading of the statement.
He said that he, Matabane, Xaba and another man called Philani Shange (charges were earlier withdrawn against him) hid in a cave in Shongweni on the night of November 6 last year.
Matabane and Shange approached him with a plan to rob Noble, their previous boss, because they had been “fired… in the wrong way”.
They wanted the others to go to the house to see if they could find any money or property.
There was “only an old white man and an old white woman” living there and, believing the man might have a firearm, Matabane, Xaba and Shange were armed with knives. Mathonsi had a sticky bandage to tie them up.
They waited in the cave until midnight, until it was dark and quiet, then entered the couple’s open garage and hid until Noble came to close the garage.
“When the white male came downstairs into the garage, he switched the lights on. Siyabonga hit him with something.”
They all ran and “pressed him down,” and Mathonsi tied his feet with sticky tape, while Matabane tied his hands and covered his face with sticky tape to prevent him screaming.
“We then put him on the side of the garage as he was fighting.”
Everyone went upstairs and Mathonsi heard the woman screaming. He entered the bedroom “only to find Siyabonga busy choking the old white lady… he was choking her on the neck with his bare hands. After about 10 minutes, I noticed she was dead.”
Mathonsi ran for the laptop and jewellery and Xaba managed to open the bedroom safe with a tool, but there was no money in it.
Mathonsi found a wallet with R2 000 and later divided it up between them. He was scared to take the cards in case he got caught.
Everything they stole was loaded into the Noble’s car, except for a generator, which was too big to fit.
Xaba later used a friend’s van to collect the generator, but Mathonsi said he did not want to go and get it as his “blood is shaking”. He told the others not to kill anyone and had taken the sticky bandage along to tie them up.
Mathonsi’s advocate, Joseph Kilani, said his client would say the statement was “a fabrication, a made-up version” based on what he heard police were saying about the crime.
Responding, McGray said Mathonsi said he was making the statement based on things that happened in front of him and about what he knew.
Daily News