Johannesburg - The man accused of murdering two eight-year-old cousins appeared in the Germiston Magistrate’s court on Thursday with red, swollen eyes after community members beat him up.
Mbongeni Mavimbela was arrested on Monday after CCTV cameras showed a man walking away with Kefilwe and Thato Motaung.
In the footage, Thato could be seen running after a man when he saw him luring his cousin away.
The cousins were found bludgeoned to death underneath plastic covers in an abandoned building behind the Germiston mortuary early on Monday.
A relative, who asked not to be named, said that when she arrived at their family home from Joburg on Sunday night, she was confronted with a group of enraged residents beating up the suspect.
“I urged them to leave him alone so he could tell us where the children he abducted were and whether they were safe, before they beat him to death,” she said.
The suspect led angry community members to the building site where the bodies were discovered.
In court on Thursday, Mavimbela, 40, expressed no remorse. He lashed out at the interpreter, claiming an investigating officer had threatened to send people to feed him rat poison in prison.
The Star