Pretoria - A young woman told the high court in Pretoria how she hid 10 packets of the drug Cat in the nappy of a baby which she had abducted a month earlier, as her Nigerian drug dealer boyfriend alerted her that the police were on their way to raid their home.
Jabulile Masombuka, 23, pleaded guilty on Friday on a charge of abduction and another charge of the possession of drugs. She was convicted on both charges and will be sentenced on Wednesday August 10.
She said in her explanation of plea that, while she already had one child with another man, her boyfriend and co-accused Kingsley Nnadi, 33, wanted a child from her.
She could not conceive any more children and she told him they should adopt a baby. “He told me we had to rather kidnap a baby and gave me R4 000 to facilitate the kidnapping.”
Masombuka said she and two men on January 30, 2014, waited in a car on a street corner in Brakpan for a baby to kidnap. They saw a woman walking past with a baby on her back. The two men pounced on her and snatched the baby, before speeding off.
She looked after the baby for about a month, when her boyfriend, who was in police custody at the time on an unrelated charge, phoned her to warn her the police were going to raid their house for drugs.
“I tried to hide the drugs, but I was a bit late, as the police were already there. I stuffed some packets into the baby’s nappy, but four packets fell out just as the police walked in.”
Prosecutor Salome Scheepers told the court that it was by coincidence that the police raided the house and found the missing baby. “If it was not for the raid, the child would have never been found,” she said.
Masombuka cried bitterly as a letter she wrote to the court was read out by her advocate. She pleaded for forgiveness and said she was haunted at night about what she had done.
Nnadi and another accused, Thapelo Derick Mthapo, 27 pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and drug related charges. They will go on trial in October.
Pretoria News