2010-10-20 Murder suspect of Jan Engelbrecht on Sept 8 2008 acquitted by Pretoria High Court of murder, convicted of armed robbery.
PRETORIA NEWS - Merinda Engelbrecht outside the Pretoria High Court after attending the trial of Ernest Masipa of Phomolong, the man acquitted of murdering her husband Jan in an armed attack on the Afrikaner family on September 8 2008. Five months earlier, Merinda and her daughter Megan had also been attacked during a store-robbery.
Photo: Masi LosiEngelbrecht Merina PtaHighCourt_husband Jan murdered suspect Ernest Masipa acquitted Oct212010
“Nobody will ever understand how traumatic it is to be attacked in your home and have your husband killed in front of you. I am battling to come to terms with this. When I close my eyes, the attack plays out in my mind like a movie.” This is how the widow of former Mac’s Motorbike Club vice-president Jan Engelbrecht feels more than two years after a gang broke into their Keerweer Street home in Booysens, Pretoria. Merinda Engelbrecht’s husband was shot dead while running to the aid of his family, who were wrestling with the attackers outside. Ernest Masipa of Phomolong, west of Atteridgeville, was the only member of the gang to be caught. Judge Mrs Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi of the Pretoria High Court yesterday acquitted him of Mr Engelbrecht’s murder – but did convict the man of robbery with aggravating circumstances.The judge found that “Masipa had already fled the premises by the time Jan Engelbrecht was shot.”
Masipa admitted that he and the rest of the gang planned to rob the Engelbrecht couple – and that he knew that two of the gang members were armed. However, said the judge, ‘the State had not proved that Masipa associated himself with the act of killing Engelbrecht” and ‘had already left the premises by the time the first shot (outside the house) was fired” she said.
The gang broke into the house in the early hours of September 8, 2008. The family’s ordeal started when a gunman entered the bedroom of the Engelbrechts’ daughter Megan and demanded her cellphone. Another man also entered her room, but the two fled when they heard a commotion outside. Megan fled her father’s bedroom – finding a man standing over him pointing a gun. This man also ran outside when he heard a shot being fired in the bedroom. At the time, Mrs Merinda Engelbrecht and her sons Evan and Marcelle were outside, confronting the robbers. Megan and her father ran out to help them, but her father was hit in the chest by a bullet as he stepped outside. Blows and shots were exchanged, but the attackers of the Afrikaner family got away. They took jewellery and other valuables, which were never recovered. Masipa told the court that he ‘was already down the road by the time the first shots were fired”. He also denied that he ever was inside the Engelbrecht house. He had stood outside a window while the others handed him the loot.
The Engelbrecht family had their share of being crime victims, Merinda Engelbrecht said after the trial yesterday. Her husband was robbed five months before being killed. She and Megan were also robbed when they walked into a store. The robbers again stole her jewellery and took her handbag, in which she kept a note her late husband had written to her. “It is not going well with us. We are receiving counselling, but one cannot just wipe out what happened. Our whole lives have been turned upside down, and my soul mate was taken from me,” Merinda said. - Pretoria News http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/robber-acquitted-of-murder-1.687789
The time has come to make yourself HEARD about the DNA-Bill – before Oct 23 2010!
Why? Because the Portfolio Committee on Police (National Assembly) has invited interested individuals and organisations to submit written submissions on the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill (also referred to as the “DNA Bill”)
The adoption of the DNA Bill now requires public submissions, and lots of them, commenting on the Bill – and it is here that each one of you reading this entry, must take a stand and make the time to email your submissions to jmichaels@parliament.gov.za by no later than 23 October 2009 as to why you think it is fundamental that this law is passed in SA. Your email will not be one in a string of unread emails that circulates endlessly, crying out for a change. Your email WILL EFFECT that change, and the more people you tell to comment on the Bill, the more chance we have of ensuring that the Bill is passed by Parliament in its final form. If ever there was a time to tangibly make a difference in SA, it is now. Please – make yourself heard. Invitations for written submissions on the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill [B2- 2009] have now been called for. PLEASE make yourself heard and email your submissions to the Portfolio Committee on Police before 23 October 2009. http://dnaproject.co.za/blog/category/newsletter
No comments:
Post a Comment