Alleged serial rapist appears in court

AN ALLEGED serial rapist, who terrorised and raped five women, appeared in the Durban Magistrate’s Court last week.

The alleged rapist, Sakile Gumede, 29, would probably have been free had it not been for one of his alert victims.

The 28-year-old victim telephoned police from her cellphone after she spotted him on a Reservoir Hills bus bound for the city on September 6 last year.

Gumede, who lived in an informal settlement in Reservoir Hills, was nabbed by Warrant Officer Sujith Rohith, of the Inanda Crime Unit.

He has been charged with raping the 28-year-old woman at her home in Reservoir Hills on September 2, 2013; a doctor’s wife at the victim’s home in Durban on August 5, 2010; a 55year-old granny at her Greenwood Park home on September 17, 2010 and a 64-year-old granny at her Reservoir Hills home on January 23, 2010.

While police linked Gumede to the alleged rapes from DNA records, it emerged from the court record that he was previously arrested in March last year for an alleged robbery at a house in Reservoir Hills, and was released by the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court.

Had he being denied bail by the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court in March 2013, the alleged rape of the 28-year-old woman on September 2, 2013, may have been averted.

Owing to the seriousness of the case, he is likely to be tried in the Durban High Court.