DAILY VOICE

The dead toddlers mom Lara Boer. Photo: Brendan Magaar

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• ‘Meningitis death’ actually murder

A family is stunned after a Cape Town court released an alleged child killer on bail.

Anthea Kleynhans, 33, appeared in the Blue Downs Magistrates’ Court on Friday on charges of murdering her boyfriend’s three-year-old daughter Lache.

She was arrested with the child’s father Angelo Stols, 24, at their home in Happy Valley last month after they claimed Lache stopped breathing after vomiting.

Angelo was released that same day while Kleynhans was charged with the girl’s murder.

The couple told Lache’s mother, Lara Boer, 19, she died of meningitis.

But a post-mortem revealed the toddler died because of a blow to the head with a blunt object.

When she was rushed to hospital on January 23, her hands were also swollen and the little girl had scars on her lip and eye.

Lara told the Daily Voice she believed her child died of natural causes until police told her otherwise.

Before her appearance at the Blue Downs Magistrates’ Court on Friday, the two families sat opposite each other, barely making eye contact.

Lara appeared calm while a short distance from her, Angelo sat waiting in anticipation for his fiance’s bail hearing.

Kleynhans appeared before Magistrate Gerald Hattingh casually dressed in a yellow T-shirt and a beige pants with her hair tied back.

She briefly glanced at the packed gallery as she entered the dock.

In a statement read by her legal aid attorney, the mother of three children – aged 14, nine and four – stated she would plead not guilty to the murder charge.

The State said they would not oppose bail and Kleynhans was granted R300 bail by Hattingh who told the court “there are still a lot of questions”.

“There must be more information for her to be arrested [and] at this stage it is uncertain what that information is,” Hattingh said.

Kleynhans’ release angered the victim’s family who later blamed the investigating officer who is currently on leave.

Lara told the Daily Voice she did not expect the outcome.

“I’m shocked,” she says.

“I don’t know what to say, this was all so unexpected.”

Kleynhans is expected back in court in May.

* This article was published in the Daily Voice