Staff Reporter
The Free State High Court has sentenced a teenager to 15 years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to the murder of his girlfriend in May last year.
Obed Leshoro, 19, a college student from Naudeville in Welkom, pleaded guilty to killing Naledi Lethoba, 21, on May 19, 2019 in a brutal attack that left her with a knife stuck in her neck and some body parts missing.
Lethoba, from Bothaville, was a student at the Goldfields TVET College in Welkom.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) regional spokesperson Phaladi Shuping told The Free Stater by telephone that Leshoro suspected his girlfriend of cheating on him, leading to the savage attack.
“Leshoro confronted Lethoba after suspecting that she was cheating on him,” said Shuping, who speaks for the NPA in the Free State and the Northern Cape.
“She admitted that she was having other affairs and Leshoro got angry and left before coming back to lure her to her death,” he added.
According to a detailed plea agreement read out in court, Leshoro took his father’s bakkie later later day and called Lethoba saying he was going to see her.
“He picked the deceased up from her home and drove off with her. He stopped the car at a quiet (place). An argument ensued between the accused and the deceased,” read part of the plea document.
“The accused then took a knife and stabbed the deceased in the chest. The deceased grabbed the knife but the accused managed to get it back. He stabbed the deceased again and left (the) knife stuck in her neck. He put the body of the deceased in the back of the bakkie and drove to a petrol station to buy petrol.”
Leshoro then drove to an open field in Dagbreek, a suburb in Welkom, where he cut off her breasts, hid the body in the bushes and set it alight.
The police said at the time the body was discovered by a passerby walking through an open field.
The knife was still stuck in her neck. The breasts had been cut off and she had burn wounds on her lower body and face.
The teenager only confessed to the killing to his father about 10 days later.
He took him to the crime scene and was eventually handed over to the police by the family.