Mother discovered dying daughter after boyfriend stabbed her 39 times

The sight of her bleeding and dying daughter greeted the mother of a girl who was stabbed 39 times by her boyfriend.

The court heard this as Thomas Davids, 22, who was charged with kidnapping and pre-meditated murder, applied for bail at the Protea Magistrate's Court in Soweto on Monday.

In a statement read by his lawyer, Davids confessed to stabbing Valdene Jacobs, 19, in October last year. According to a statement by the investigating officer, Jacobs was stabbed 39 times on her face, neck, chest, arm, leg and hands.

Sitting in the public gallery, members of Jacobs' family cried while the constable read out his statement. The family of the accused sat silently in the gallery next to them.

Davids said he found out Jacobs had lied to him about staying at home when she was in fact at a party. He went to the party and took her to his house.

When they got there, they started hitting each other and only stopped when his mother intervened.

A family meeting including the couple and their mothers was called, and at the end of it Jacobs' mother told the accused to stay away from her daughter because he had physically assaulted her.

Davids agreed but the couple did not end their relationship. They agreed to meet again a month later.

On the day of her death, Jacobs was walking to the accused's house with a friend when he met them, and the couple allegedly swore at each other.

Davids then forcefully took her to his house where he said they continued fighting. During the fight he grabbed a knife in the kitchen and started stabbing her. She ran out of the house and into the driveway. He followed and continued to stab her.

The last words he heard from her were “You're going to kill me” before he jumped over the wall around the house and ran away to kill himself. Unable to muster up the courage to do so, he called a friend and told him what had happened and asked the friend to take him to the police station.

Jacobs's mother found her lying in the driveway when she and a friend walked by. They took her to a nearby fire station where she died.

Davids was refused bail and he will appear in court again in May.