Cape Times

Women hold hands while sentenced for horror killing

- Zelda Venter

TWO young women stood in the dock, holding hands, while their fate was sealed.

They stood accused of abducting and murdering a teenager, dousing her in petrol and setting her alight. They then fled and left her to burn to death.

Boitomelo Dlamini, 18, died a horrible death and her killers – Cynthia Mosupi, 23, and Sharon Gugu Twala, 24 – showed her no mercy. They in fact tortured her before killing her, Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela said yesterday.

He sentenced Mosupi to an effective 18 years’ imprisonme­nt as she was the instigator, and Twala to an effective 14 years for her role in the killing.

Twala held down the terrified Dlamini while Mosupi doused her with petrol and lit the match.

Twala cried bitterly throughout sentencing while Mosupi sat close to her in an apparent bid to console her.

Twala assisted her friend on June 18, 2015, when they abducted Dlamini from the Eletsa Secondary School in Lethlabile near Brits shortly after she wrote an exam. They took her to veld behind a graveyard near Klipgat.

Mosupi was livid with Dlamini who had a relationsh­ip with her former boyfriend and father of her child.

She earlier told the court that she only wanted to teach Dlamini a lesson by pouring petrol over her. She never intended to set her alight

But the judge rejected this and questioned why she then took matches as well as a can of petrol to the scene of the killing. He judge said it was clear that the two women did not grasp the gravity of their actions at the time.

He referred to Twala, who during vital evidence against her by a State witness, even dozed off in the dock.

But shocking visuals taken with a cellphone by a friend, who went with them to the scene of the killing seemed to have caused the women to realise what they had done.

Twala was so traumatise­d by the sounds and visuals that she asked the court to excuse her from looking at them.

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