No mental defect for mom who shot sons – expert

THE woman who killed her two sons did not suffer from any mental defect at the time of the incident.

Rehithile Katlego Matjane, 34, acted rationally throughout the day up to a few minutes prior to pulling the trigger, when she said she could not remember anything.

This is according to a psychiatrist at Weskoppies, part of the forensic team who assessed her in 2015 shortly after her arrest. A magistrate referred her for a 30-day evaluation.

Dr Jacobeth Pooe, who was a member of the panel of three psychiatrists who had assessed Matjane, yesterday took the stand in the North Gauteng High Court to shed more light on why the panel found that Matjane could be held criminally responsible for her actions.

The mother is accused of killing the two boys in April 2015 after fetching them from school and driving from Pretoria east to a remote spot in Hammanskraal, where she shot them at point-blank range.

The mother’s defence is that while she did not deny she had pulled the trigger, she could not remember anything about the actual killings.

Psychiatrist Dr Ivanov Savov this week testified on her behalf and said she could not be held responsible for her actions due to the side effects of the medication she had taken for a few days leading up to the incident and on the day of the killings. He diagnosed her as suffering from sane automatism.

But Pooe said from her assessment, there was nothing to make her believe that the woman had suffered from a mental defect which resulted in her killing lvero, 2, and Keyondre, 6.

The expert said on the day, Matjane acted normally; she fetched her children from school, strapped them into the car and drove normally until she found a remote spot.

The next thing she claimed she remembered was “waking up” and finding her sons dead, one in a pool of blood outside and the other in the front seat of the car.

Matjane told Pooe that she felt suicidal earlier in the day and fetched her husband’s firearm from the safe. She went to the garage to shoot herself, but decided against it. Instead of taking it back, she placed it in the boot of her car. Pooe said if she did not want to use the gun, one would expect her to put it back. “It seems to me this was planned.”

Matjane also told her that she had been feeling depressed for two days prior to the incident. This increased on the day when she returned from taking the children to school and her husband, psychiatrist Dr Maxwell Matjane, was not home.

Pooe also referred to the fact that after the killings Matjane went to a nearby house to get help, where she asked a woman to phone her mother and her husband. She even supplied their numbers.

Pooe said after she shot the children, she took all the medication in her possession.