Johannesburg -
Sentencing procedures of former Blue Bulls player Phindile Joseph Ntshongwana, convicted of axing four people to death, are expected to continue in the Durban High Court on Wednesday.
Earlier in the week, Ntshongwana's father Liston asked the court that his son be kept in a prison hospital due to his “serious condition.
“It is not an ordinary condition. We just don't know what triggers his things,” he said during mitigation of sentencing.
A clinical psychologist testified that, after evaluating Ntshongwana for more than four hours, she found “significant memory impairment”.
In September, Judge Irfaan Khalil convicted Ntshongwana of four counts of murder, two of attempted murder, one of kidnapping, one of rape, and one of assault.
Ntshongwana hacked his victims to death with an axe in various parts of Durban in March 2011. In the same month, he tried to kill two other men, one in Umlazi and the other in Lamontville.
In November 2010, he raped and kidnapped a woman.
Khalil previously dismissed the defence's contention that Ntshongwana had suffered from a mental illness at the time of the crimes.
“The murders were planned and not impulsive acts committed on the spur of the moment. His decapitation of the victims was purposeful,” Khalil said at the time. - Sapa