Police reveal Eskom employee Thembisile Yende was injected, beaten to death
It is alleged her body was moved three days after the murder and placed in her office storeroom.
Thembisile Lucia Yende
The man accused of the premeditated murder of Thembisile Yende, 30, David Ngwenya, 44, and his defence team appeared in the Springs Magistrates’ Court on Monday and Tuesday to apply for bail, reports the Springs Advertiser.
Ngwenya’s bail hearing will continue on Thursday.
Yende’s decomposed body was found in her office at the Eskom Pieterboth Substation, in Struisbult, last month, two weeks after she was reported missing.
A preliminary postmortem revealed she sustained head injuries and was suffocated.
During the bail hearing, Ngwenya, who works for Eskom as a technician, was formally charged and asked to plead. In a sworn affidavit, read by his legal counsel, he denied killing Yende.
Ngwenya was arrested on May 15 in Carletonville, on the West Rand.
“But 20 days later, he is still fighting for his bail application to be heard which, by law, he is entitled to within seven days of arrest,” said his lawyer, Francois Roets.
Ngwenya’s affidavit states he is a responsible citizen and an employee of Eskom.
“I don’t have any previous convictions or pending cases against me. I am a father of three young children who still need me at home. I have properties worth R1.5 million in the country but don’t have any properties outside the country,” the bail application further stated.
READ MORE:#ThembisileYende: Numsa welcomes arrest of suspect
The state called on the investigating officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Christo Lotz, to testify and he argued that releasing Ngwenya on bail might hamper further investigations into the case.
“We are yet to arrest a further two suspects in connection with the case and the state’s witness has already been threatened and has had to flee his home twice. He has been receiving calls threatening his children’s safety. Releasing Ngwenya now might lead to the police not being able to arrest the other two suspects,” Lotz said.
Lotz said preliminary results revealed Yende was injected with a substance that rendered her unconscious.
According to Lotz, she was then taken to some bushes where it is believed she was beaten and received a blow to the back of the head, which led to her death.
He says it is believed her body was moved three days later and placed in her office storeroom, where it was found after her colleagues noticed a bad smell coming from the office and alerted police.
It is alleged Yende was romantically involved with Ngwenya and was planning on blowing the whistle on copper cable theft.
Preliminary postmortem results reveal Thembisile Lucia Yende was murdered.
Family of Eskom employee found dead to picket outside the Springs substation
At the end of May, Yende’s brother said the family would be holding a picket outside the substation in the hopes that their questions to the utility would be answered.
Her body was discovered at an Eskom substation in Springs after she was reported missing two weeks ago. Reports say the 30-year-old Eskom employee was last seen when she went to her workplace in the evening on May 17.
“The picket will be from 09:30 this morning at the substation, we are trying to get answers as a family,” the deceased’s brother, Mboneni Zakhele Yende, said.
“Why was she found 13 days later? A search was done with k9 dogs after she went missing, and she was not found … but 13 days later she is found.”
Yende said that in order for the family to find closure, they needed to understand “what happened” to his sister.
“We are not fighting Eskom, it’s going to peaceful.”
He said family members went to the police station to report her missing after she did not return home and was not answering her phone.
“There are stories that surveillance was not working, then there’s another that she was seen walking in in the morning so those are the things we need to find out,” Yende said.
“What was done when they heard that she was missing and what procedures were followed when they found out that their surveillance was not working? Please Eskom, give us the answers we need.”
– Caxton News Service
READ MORE
https://www.citizen.co.za/news/thembisileyende-numsa-welcomes-arrest-suspect/
– Additional reporting by the African News Agency
For more news your way, follow The Citizen on Facebook and Twitter
