A TRAIL OF DEATH RAN THROUGH THE HOME
Cops’ forensic tests show blood was mopped up, gunshot residue on her hand
THE East London home of slain social development department chief of staff and ANC leader, Sakhekile Ndudula, 52, was riddled with bullets, and a trail of spent cartridges ran through two bedrooms, a passage and the garage.
This was some of the startling evidence led in the murder trial of his primary school teacher wife Bulelwa Ndudula, 46, in the High Court sitting in East London yesterday.
Police, using the detection chemical luminol, found signs that an attempt had been made to mop away blood in the couple’s Cambridge West home.
One witness said he was shot eight times. But the most disturbing evidence for Bulelwa Ndudula’s defence – since her advocate Mike Maseti has told the court the gunpowder residue on her right hand and clothing had come from when she was helping her wounded husband get to a car – was testimony from state witness Vumani Majeke that trashes this version.
Majeke, a reaction officer at security company ADT, testified: “It was only the three of us who carried the husband and she [Bulelwa] was nowhere to be seen while we were doing so.”
This is a flat contradiction of Bulelwa’s claim that the gunshot residue found on her right hand and clothing was there as a result of her helping to carry her injured husband to the vehicle used to transport him to hospital.
Yesterday was day three of the week-long trial, which is scheduled to be finalised tomorrow.
The first police officer to arrive at the Ndudula’s home on the morning of the shooting on September 14 in 2016, Warrant Officer Raul Petzer, yesterday told the court that he was “surprised” by the “behaviour and demeanour” of Bulelwa Ndudula’s wife when he spoke to her just moments after her husband died.
He found it “inconsistent with someone who had just lost a husband” and described it as “unusual”.
Petzer said even though he found the house “clean” when he went there, he believed that there may have been “a struggle” before Ndudula was killed.
He had picked up two white shirt buttons on the floor of the garage and in one of the three bedrooms, and the contents of a jewellery box were scattered on the floor in a bedroom.
Petzer told Judge Igna Stretch that when he entered the house, he found a 9mm cartridge in the garage.
“When I moved to the main bedroom, blood marks were visible.
“In the room I also saw bullet holes in the cupboard and in the ceiling trim.
“When I went out of the bedroom to survey the rest of the house, I found a 9mm cartridge in the passage between the second and third bedrooms. When I entered the second bedroom I found two empty cartridges and a shirt button on the floor.
“Also a live 9mm round was found in the second bedroom, while there were signs that shots were also fired into the floor and cupboards in that room.”
He said this was inconsistent with what Bulelwa had told him when he questioned her at St Dominic’s Hospital, where her husband died from his injuries. She had said the shots were fired from outside the house.
Petzer said: “If he was shot from outside, projectiles would have been in the garage only and not in the bedrooms as is the case here.”
Petzer said he found a blood splatter trail in the third room and in the passage which had been “mopped up and cleaned”.
He explained that the blood trails were found by police forensic investigators when they applied luminol, a chemical which can detect traces of blood even if someone has tried to clean or remove it.
He said the version of events given to him by Bulelwa and what he had observed at the home did not match.
He had asked Bulelwa to undergo a primary gunpowder residue test “to exclude her in the probe as she was the only one in the house when the incident happened”.
He said residue was found on her right hand and clothing.
Petzer said from what he had observed, Sakhekile was “dragged” from the bedroom to the garage and that his blood was later cleaned up.
Ndudula’s cousin, Sindiswa Gede, who works as a district manager for health services at Amathole district , testified that she was the first person Bulelwa called after the shooting.
She said Sakhekile was close to her and he had confided to her on many of his problems, including marital ones.
Gede said contrary to what Bulelwa had told the court in her plea statement on Monday – that her husband had many enemies within the ANC – he had never mentioned anything about having enemies, or that he had any fears for his life.
She drove to St Dominic’s and found Bulelwa there.
A doctor told the two women that Sakhekile had died and that he had eight gunshot wounds.
She said Bulelwa had nearly collapsed when they were shown his body in the emergency room.
The packed public gallery appeared divided between those who supported the widow and Ndudula’s relatives and comrades, including ANC MPL Mzuyanda Sokujika.
After proceedings late yesterday, the widow – who is out on bail – was seen, together with some of her supporters, smiling and jiving playfully for the camera in and outside court premises. —