Staff Reporter
The Bloemfontein Magistrates Court on Wednesday sentenced Kopano Nelson Tjobo to 15 years’ imprisonment for the murder of his wife, Sefora Tjobo, last year.
The court heard that Kopano led Bloemspruit police to an empty reservoir dam in an open veld near the intersection of the R702 and Dewetsdorp Road, where he had killed the woman.
Provincial police spokesperson Brigadier Sam Makhele said in a statement the accused initially misled his neighbours into believing that his wife disappeared with a boyfriend.
“He drafted a false letter with a message from a fictitious boyfriend arranging to meet his wife at the stock commonage near the murder scene,” said Makhele.
“The police . . . arrived at the scene and discovered the lifeless body of Kopano’s wife with strangulation marks visible on the neck. A piece of electrical cord was lying next to the body,” he added.
The accused, said Makhele, voluntarily pointed out the murder scene and then confessed to the killing before a magistrate.
Meanwhile, an alert highway patrol officer has recovered a truck believed to have been hijacked at Koppies with goods worth over R3-million.
A man who was found in the truck was immediately arrested.
Warrant Officer Gielie Strauss spotted the truck on Tuesday evening after it was parked next to the road on the off-ramp from the R59, towards the Vaal Plaza. There was no one in the vehicle.
Later in the evening, the Gauteng Response Unit reported that a truck owner reported that he had discovered on the surveillance system that the person driving his truck was not his driver.
Strauss immediately suspected that the truck he had seen earlier could have been hijacked.
He then went back to the truck and found that it fit the description of the possibly hijacked vehicle.
He found a man at the truck and upon interrogation, the person said the truck had been hijacked.
The owner was informed and he came to the scene.
While still at the scene, the original driver arrived at a nearby Engen One Stop service station with his hands tied and had injuries to the face.
The 32-year-old driver told police that he was stopped at the Koppies Rooiwal off-ramp by unknown men in a Red Hyundai i10 with a blue light in the front window.
He thought they were traffic police officials, but he was allegedly pointed with a firearm and forced back into the truck.
He said they drove for a while before dropping him in a field where two of the men guarded him while one was left with at the truck.
The two were later picked up by an unknown vehicle and the driver walked to the N1 and sought help at the garage.
The suspect, a 39-year-old Zimbabwean national residing in Johannesburg, was arrested and the Freightliner truck was confiscated by the police.
The suspect will be charged for truck hijacking and will appear at the Koppies Magistrates Court on Friday.