‘I love you SMS’ drove man to murder

Johannesburg - He shot dead the mother of his two children at point-blank range, hitting her in the forehead while their two-month-old baby lay next to her.

It was a love triangle gone bad – a scorned Mlungisi Mchunu said in initially admitting he had murdered Senzeni Sikhakhane in March last year.

Sikhakhane was cheating on him with another man and he killed her for that, he told police in a confession statement – which he later told the court had been made under duress.

But while the Soweto man pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, insisting he had been assaulted into implicating himself, Johannesburg High Court Acting Judge Naren Pandya ruled differently on Wednesday.

“It was the accused who committed the murder. This court finds him an unprincipled person who lied and lied. He is found guilty of murder unlawfully possessing a firearm which he had hidden in the ceiling of his shower,” said Judge Pandya.

The Jabulani hostel resident said in his statement to the police that an “I love you SMS” he had found on Sikhakhane’s phone had driven him to kill her.

The SMS had been sent by Simon “Sugar” Mbatha, a man Sikhakhane had started dating while pregnant with her youngest child.

When Mbatha testified in court, he said Mchunu had called him and warned him that “something is going to happen”.

The next day, the mother-of-four was found dead near her baby in a shack in Jabulani.

Judge Pandya was expected to hand down sentence on Thursday.

omphitlhetse.mooki@inl.co.za

The Star