‘Killer’ mom asked cop to ‘please kill her’ after shooting sons

A 34-year-old Pretoria businesswoman ran to a police captain, hugged her, told her she had killed her kids and asked the officer to please kill her as well because she wanted to rest, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has heard.

This was the testimony of Captain Baesetja Makgapa in the trial of Rehithile Matjane, 34, who is accused of murdering her sons, Alvaro, two, and Keyon’dre, six, on a smallholding near Hammanskraal in April 2015.

Matjane denied guilt, claiming she had no recollection of the shootings and could not be held accountable for her actions as she was under the influence of medication and other substances at the time.

READ MORE: ‘Killer’ mom tried to kill herself after shooting kids, court hears 

Makgapa said Matjane was crying, but otherwise appeared normal. She found a boy of about six years old on the ground on the right hand side of a car in a pool of blood. A younger boy was in the front seat with the seatbelt still on. His head was slumped over and he had a wound at the nape of his neck.

Matjane confirmed the children were hers and that she had shot them. Asked why, she said she “had struggled for 12 years” in her marriage.

Matjane’s counsel, Piet Pistorius, put it to her that his client could remember fetching her children but had no recollection of getting to the scene or of shooting them. She remembered seeing her eldest son lying next to the car in a pool of blood, the youngest slumped over in the passenger seat and putting the gun against her head and pulling the trigger, but only hearing a click.

Two pathologists testified that both boys were shot in the face. The youngest was shot in the left eye and died almost instantaneously while his brother was shot in the forehead and arm and could have been alive for seconds to minutes after being shot.

Ballistics expert Captain Solomon Modisane testified that the eldest boy was probably shot in the arm while still inside the car, but shot in the head when he got out. The youngest child was in the passenger seat.

The trial continues on July 31.

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