Durban — Two suspects, aged 25 and 39, have been arrested for the rape and murder of uMlazi teenager, Wandile Aphiwe Ngcobo, 17.
At the time of the incident, Wandile was a Grade 11 pupil at Durban Girls’ Secondary getting ready for her mid-year exams.
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker said the suspects were apprehended at the weekend by detectives from the Provincial Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit.
Naicker said the suspects were arrested separately, one in Malukazi and the other in Clermont, for the rape and murder of Wandile on May 28 in uMlazi.
Naicker said it is alleged that on the day of the incident, Mondli Ngcobo received a call from his neighbour telling him that they spotted an unknown person wearing a balaclava leaving his home with a TV set.
Ngcobo, who was at work at the time, asked the neighbour to investigate further as his daughter was in the house.
He said the neighbour went to the house and discovered Wandile’s body with her hands tied at the back and with multiple stab wounds.
Police were summoned to the house and as they processed the scene they discovered that the deceased was also raped.
A case docket of murder, rape and robbery was registered and later handed over to the Provincial FCS Serial Electronic Crime Investigation Unit for investigation.
“Investigators worked night and day trying to crack the case without a lot of leads to go on.
“Finally, their dedication paid off as they arrested a 25-year-old suspect, who was in possession of the deceased’s cellphone, on Saturday, July 6, at Malukazi.
“The investigators continued working throughout the day and night and in the early hours of Sunday, July 7, they arrested a second suspect, 39, who is a parolee, at KwaShembe area in Clermont, for rape and murder,” Naicker said.
Naicker said the 25-year-old suspect will appear in the Umlazi Magistrate’s Court on Monday for possession of stolen property while the second suspect is expected to appear on Tuesday.
Before the arrests, Ngcobo said he felt his daughter’s murder would end up unsolved like that of Senzo Meyiwa.
On Sunday, Ngcobo told the Daily News his suspicions were confirmed that his daughter knew her killer.
Ngcobo said the first suspect to be apprehended by the police is from a house right across their street. This confirms what Ngcobo earlier suspected about how things looked when he arrived on the scene -- that his daughter knew her killer.
Wandile had been home alone that day. She was supposed to have gone to school with her sister Siphosethu, who is in Grade 8, but had asked to stay at home so she could prepare for the mid-year exams.
When Ngcobo spoke to the Daily News after the murder, he said that when he got home, he found Wandile lying there. She had stab wounds to her chest. There was a pool of blood in their room.
He said the suspects took a Hisense television that was mounted on the wall, a DStv decoder, cellphone, her school bag and books.
Ngcobo said he suspected his daughter was raped and had alerted the doctor at the mortuary who made a note of it.
“They killed my child. They stabbed and murdered her. They tied her up and gagged her with pantyhose so that she could not scream. It didn’t end there, they sexually assaulted her. There are witnesses to this.”
Ngcobo said Wandile’s mother died last year and they had raised their daughter to love God and go to church. She had been elected as a delegate in the church’s youth divisions created by young women of the church.
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Daily News