School principal’s widow tearfully recalls husband’s shooting

The widow of a school principal who was shot dead through his kitchen door by robbers on Thursday burst into tears in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria when she testified about her ordeal.

School teacher Lebogang Mnguni testified that she was busy working on her laptop at her home in Doringpoort in Pretoria North one night in October 2015 when she heard a noise at the kitchen.

When her husband, school principal Mlandu Mnguni, opened the kitchen door to investigate, he had a firearm pointed at him. He managed to close the door, but his attackers fired several shots through the door.

Mr Mnguni was killed in the shooting and Mrs Mnguni fled to the garage where she stayed until the police arrived.

She was at the hospital to identify his body when the police phoned and asked her to go to the Pretoria North police station, where she identified her laptop and a television set that had been stolen from their house.

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Danford Ngwazi, Moses Ndlovu, Johannes Phiri and Trust Innnocent Moyo denied murdering Mr Mnguni and Marius Els, who was shot dead during a robbery at his house in Bon Accord on the same night.

They also denied charges of housebreaking, robbery, attempted murder and the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.

Els’s former wife Liza, who shared a house with him at a family resort in Bon Accord, testified she had heard shots fired in and outside their house that night.

She and her daughter later found her former husband lying on his bed with his eyes open and a small blood spot on his chest.

Her daughter put her hand under her father’s back to try to revive him, but her hand was covered in blood when she withdrew it and there was a spent cartridge in her hand.

Warrant Officer Abraham Holtzhausen testified that three of the accused were caught when the police chased their car following a tip-off about another planned house robbery in the area.

They were arrested after a head-on collision with another car.

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