'Chicken' guilty of killing Cuburné

22 May 2015 - 02:08 By Roxanne Henderson

Now that Reiger Park toddler Cuburné van Wyk's killer has been found guilty his siblings can sleep without nightmares. Leonora Dewee said her niece, 6, and nephew, 10, had been living in fear since their brother was murdered."I can now talk to his elder brother and sister and say everything is okay," Dewee said yesterday.She was speaking outside the Johannesburg High Court, which was sitting at the Palm Ridge Magistrate's Court, in Katlehong, on the East Rand.Nathaniel "Chicken" Mpoku, 27, was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Cuburné van Wyk, 3.He pleaded not guilty.Judge George Maluleke found that Mpoku failed to give a reasonable refutation of the evidence against him. He said Mpoku, who testified in his own defence, did not contest the state's evidence relating to Cuburné's kidnapping.The judge said the fact that Cuburné had not been sexually assaulted did not mean that Mpoku did not kill him ."The absence of motive does not cancel the crime," he said.Last week a 16-year-old boy testified that Mpoku was the last person he had seen with Cuburné on the afternoon the child disappeared.Mpoku claimed that Cuburné had followed him from a soccer field and when he became aware of the boy he had left him behind, but Maluleke rejected this testimony...

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