Johannesburg - A Roodepoort landlord has been arrested for allegedly killing his tenant following an argument over electricity.
Police are now searching for the landlord’s 34-year-old alleged accomplice, who is on the run with the gun believed to have been used to kill Sahr Thomas Fillie on Monday night.
The attack was brutal and merciless, said Fillie’s wife Bernadette, clutching a bloodied green T-shirt she had been wearing when her husband was attacked.
The Sierra Leonean man was slapped, punched, kicked, bitten on the finger and shot twice in the abdomen.
It was reported that tension had been simmering between Fillie and his landlord for a while, and anger boiled over at about 7.30pm after the Fillies had confronted the landlord about a dysfunctional electricity switch. The landlord accused them of bridging the electricity.
“He slapped Thomas across the face, and when I ran to the main house to tell his wife that her husband was attacking Thomas, she hit me with her elbow. I had my baby strapped to my back and she fell to the ground,” Bernadette said.
Outside the cottage, a second man had joined in, punching Fillie while the landlord allegedly bit Fillie’s finger.
“(The landlord) then shot Fillie twice in the abdomen. They then dragged him into the main house, closed the security gate and continued kicking and beating Thomas. Blessing Nwosu screamed for them to let him go, but they just ignored her,” she said.
As Bernadette ran to the main gate, screaming for help, her husband’s attackers unlocked the security gate and proceeded to drag him for about 10m. They allegedly then stripped off his clothes.
The landlord then allegedly started stamping on Fillie’s head as he groaned in pain, said family friend Nwosu.
Fillie was then dragged for another 40m and was dumped in the street across from the house. By the time police and paramedics arrived, he was dead.
“They didn’t have to be that brutal,” said Bernadette, her eyes red and swollen.
“We have been together since 2001. He’s the reason I came to South Africa (from Sierra Leone). What am I going to do now?” she asked.
A small group of members of the Community of Sierra Leoneans in South Africa comforted her.
“We are very aggrieved. Two weeks back another countryman of ours was shot in Braamfontein. We don’t know where to turn to when these things happen,” said family friend Alfred Lavalie.
Gauteng police spokeswoman Captain Augustinah Selepe said police were “still investigating what happened, so the motive is unknown at the moment”.
She said the 34-year-old landlord would appear in the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
“The other (assailant), also aged 34, fled the scene with the licensed firearm. He hasn’t been arrested,” said Selepe.
The Star