Pretoria -
A man accused of strangling his pregnant girlfriend in her parents’ Garsfontein home has asked the Pretoria High Court to discharge him.
Thato Kutumela, 26, submitted through his counsel he could not have committed the murder because he was at work at the time.
He has pleaded not guilty to murdering Zanele Khumalo on April 21, 2011 and raping her. His defence is that he was at work at the Lynnwood Bridge branch of Woolworths.
He claimed he had consensual sex with the mother of his unborn child that morning, and when he left to go to work she was fine.
When Khumalo’s parents arrived home from work that afternoon, they discovered their daughter dead in her bed.
The naked body of the 18-year-old was wrapped in a duvet and she was lying on her stomach. Her parents at first thought she was asleep, but they realised something was wrong when they shook her and she did not respond.
The teenager was rushed to Pretoria East Hospital where she was declared dead.
According to a pathologist she had been strangled. There were no marks on her hands or arms, which indicated she tried to fend off her attacker. She had two bruises – one on each side of her neck.
Kutumela claimed that he took the wrong taxi to work that morning from his Mamelodi home and ended up near Khumalo’s home. He then phoned her to inform her he was on his way to visit her.
According to him, he arrived at her home at about 8am and that when he left shortly after 10am, she was fine. He claimed he was at work at 10.35am.
A neighbour, however, earlier testified that her daughter went to visit Khumalo that morning and came back, telling her the young girl was crying and that there was a man with her.
Ina Matussowsky said she went to check on Khumalo, who was in her dressing gown at the time. She asked her whether she was okay and the young woman said she was fine.
According to Matussowsky, she saw a man sneaking through the kitchen door, although she could not see his face. She estimated the time to have been about 10.30am, as she had to be at work at about 11am.
A supervisor at Woolworths previously testified in the trial that he had “cheated” on the clock-in system that morning – he had arrived later at work than stated on the security register.
But Kutumela insisted he was at work at 10.35am and it was argued on his behalf that if Matussowsky was to be believed, Kutumela must have raped and killed her and been back at Woolworths within five minutes, which was impossible.
Judge Johan Kruger was told that the witness must have seen somebody else sneaking through the kitchen door.
The pathologist earlier estimated that by the time Khumalo’s body was discovered she had been dead between three and six hours. According to the defence, she must have been killed at about 2pm when the accused was already at work.
The State opposed the application and said there was no evidence to say she was killed early in the afternoon. Prosecutor George Baloyi said during his bail application that Kutumela claimed he was at work the entire day.
It was only after DNA linked Kutumela to having had sex with her that day, that he changed his version to say he had visited her for a short while, he added.
The application for discharge will proceed on Tuesday as the State indicated it wanted to further prepare in this regard.
Pretoria News