Trio sentenced for grisly killings of children ‘possessed by demons’

The KZN High Court sitting in Mtunzini has sentenced three people to varied terms of imprisonment following their conviction for the murder of two children, aged nine and 10, in the Nkandla area in March 2020.

The children were killed after they were accused of being possessed by demonic spirits.

Natasha Ramkisson-Kara, spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority in KZN, says the first two accused, who are women, were related to the children, with one of them being the mother of the 10-year-old. The third accused is a pastor from the area.

Ramkisson-Kara says both women believed that the children were possessed by demonic spirits, alleging that they were sucking the blood out of one of the accused’s children.

She adds that on March 24, 2020, the women invited the third accused to come over to their home and pray for the children, to drive out the demonic spirits.

During the prayers, the children were assaulted with plastic pipes and a sjambok. They were also punched and burnt with a two-plate stove.

“The assaults on the two children caused the immediate death of the nine-year-old child. Thereafter, an anonymous tip-off alerted police to what was happening, and police arrived at the scene.

“The accused were arrested and the 10-year-old child, who was still alive, was taken to hospital. She died two weeks later,” says Ramkisson-Kara.

In the state’s case, Ramkisson-Kara says advocate Nathi Kunene led the evidence of eyewitness testimonies.

She says Kunene also submitted victim impact statements compiled by the children’s family members and facilitated by court preparation officer Seneliso Sibanda.

The family members mentioned that their lives have been devastatingly affected following the incident.

“They could not believe the evil actions committed by the accused on the small children. They said that the other younger children in the house had to go for counselling following the incident.”

Ramkisson-Kara says the first and third accused were sentenced to 25 years imprisonment on each count of murder. The court ruled that the sentences would run concurrently, resulting in an effective sentence of 25 years of imprisonment each.

She says the second accused was sentenced to 15 years in prison on each count of murder and the court ruled that the sentences would run concurrently, resulting in an effective sentence of 15 years of imprisonment.

“In sentencing the trio, the court deviated from the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment saying that the case had an ‘unusual factual matrix in that the accused believed that the deceased were possessed by demons and inflicted the assaults in the process of driving out the demons from the deceased’.

“The court found this to constitute as substantial and compelling circumstances to deviate from life imprisonment. Further, the court found that the accused held varying levels of culpability in the commission of the offence. Hence the difference in the sentences received between them,” says Ramkisson-Kara.