Mother witnesses her daughter’s dying moments

“I tried to lift her up. I was looking into her face when she gave her last breath; it was as if she was waiting for me to arrive.”

Maria Nonzima Molebatsi (54) witnessed her 33-year-old daughter’s dying moments as she lay on the cold kitchen floor with the broken knife still embedded in her head. She had already been like that for five hours. Tlaleng Joyce Mosia had been stabbed by an abusive ex-boyfriend in her Ikageng home on Saturday.

Maria’s neighbour called to tell her to hurry to her daughter’s house because she has been stabbed. They could not get in because he had apparently locked her in the house after killing her.

“When I arrived, they had pulled down the corrugated iron by the kitchen and I rushed to her side.” She describes, in graphic detail, the horror of experiencing her final death throes.

Tlaleng’s 8-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old sister were there when it happened and the elder gave an account of the events leading up to the tragedy. She says her mother’s ex-boyfriend showed up at about 02:00 and started an argument. As it intensified, he stabbed her in the head. He reassured the girls that their mother had fainted because he had slapped her, took her purse and cell phone, then locked the girls inside and left.

When she went to help her mother, the little girl could still feel her heartbeat. Terrified, the sisters escaped through the burglar bars and ran to a neighbour for help; they slept there till the sun came up.

It breaks Maria’s heart to think her daughter could still be alive if the neighbour had only alerted the police on time.

“She was dying, alone, with no one to help her. I am sure someone heard the shouting and screaming and, above all, my granddaughters crying. Why didn’t they go and find out what was happening?” she asked. The neighbour argues that she was too scared to go there in case the attacker would still be lurking in the dark.

Tlaleng was a cleaner at the Riverwalk shopping centre. Maria says she was in an abusive relationship with the unemployed man until she put an end to it.

“He used to beat her up and demanded the children’s social grant each and every month. My daughter had a protection order against him since last year, but he just ignored it and kept on terrorising her.”

“I never liked him; even his own mother did not approve of the relationship.”

Maria said she had to calm Tlaleng’s brothers down after their sister’s murder; they vowed to take the law into their own hands.

“I asked them to let the law take its course.”

According to the suspect’s mother, he may be hiding in Rustenburg.

Maria described her daughter as a loving, vibrant person who was known for advising and reprimanding her family members when they had done wrong.

The Ikageng SAPS spokesperson, Const. Kelebogile Trom is sympathetic to the mother’s frustration and pleads with the community to be aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious incidents in their neighbourhood.

“I also urge communities to establish neighbourhood watches to assist each other and in the process, help the police to fight crime.

“Report any form of domestic abuse and never withdraw a protection order against an abusive partner.”