‘Prostitutes’ who lured man to robbery, murder among five sentenced

Five people, including two women who posed as prostitutes to rob a man whose partially decomposed body was discovered in bushes in 2020, have been slapped with hefty sentences by the Pretoria high court.

Lebogang Tshabalala, 29, Everjoy Sibanda, 22, and three men — Lucky Vincent Motholo, 25, Kagiso Alfread Leleme Matlhabe, 24 and Kamogelo Modise, 23 — were convicted for their role in the robbery and murder of the 38-year-old victim. 

Tshabalala, Motholo, Matlhabe and Modise were slapped with 15-year jail terms each for robbery with aggravating circumstances as well as three years each for kidnapping, according to the NPA's Lumka Mahanjana.

“Over and above that, Matlhabe and Modise were sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for murder. Sibanda was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, of which five years were suspended for robbery with aggravating circumstances and the three years wholly suspended for kidnapping,” Mahanjana said.

“On October 27 2020, in the evening, Tshabalala and Sibanda were standing at Bokfontein near a Sasol garage, pretending to be prostitutes soliciting potential clients, while the three men were in the nearby bushes.

“When the deceased was dropped off by a car from work next to where the two were standing, he asked them what they were doing, and they told him they were prostitutes. The deceased then told them to wait, while he went to withdraw money from the garage,” Mahanjana said.

After withdrawing R900, some of which he used to make a purchase, he returned to the two women and when they went to the bushes, they came across the three men.

The victim was then tied up, assaulted and forced to reveal his PIN code.

“The two women then went back to the garage to withdraw money, but the attempts failed because the deceased gave them the wrong pin.

“The following day after the mother of the deceased could not get hold of him, she opened a missing person case at the police station. After investigations, the partially decomposed body of the deceased was found in the bushes.

“The security guards at the Sasol garage alerted the police of the Avanza car they saw on the night of the incident. After investigations, four were arrested on December 19 2020. Modise was however, only arrested in February 2022.”

Only Motholo pleaded guilty, according to the NPA, while the two women pleaded for leniency because they were pregnant but their plea was rejected after the “prosecutor advocate Salome Scheepers told the court the Correctional Services Act does have provisions for pregnant women and has facilities to cater for such”.

“When handing down the sentence, the judge said murder is a serious offence, no amount of sentence will bring back the life of the deceased. Therefore, she found no substantial and compelling circumstances to deviate from imprisonment.

“The judge ordered that the sentences should run concurrently and that they be declared unfit to possess a firearm,” Mahanjana said.

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