Outjo killer denies murdering victim’s son

AN OUTJO resident denied in the Windhoek High Court yesterday that he killed his girlfriend’s six-year-old son two months before he murdered the boy’s mother in a knife attack.

A year after he admitted guilt on one of the two murder charges he is facing, while pleading not guilty to the second count of murder, Sageus Somaeb (42) told judge Naomi Shivute that he simply found the late Remember Gaingob dead where he lay in his bed in his mother’s house at Outjo on the morning of 16 May 2013.

He realised that Remember was dead when he touched him, feeling that his body was cold, and then could not detect a pulse on the boy, Somaeb said.

The prosecution is alleging that Somaeb killed Remember (6), who was the son of Somaeb’s girlfriend, Charlote Gaingos, by suffocating him during the night of 15 to 16 May 2013.

In his testimony in his own defence yesterday, Somaeb denied that he killed the boy, or assaulted him four years before his death by hitting him all over his body with a wire.

He also denied that he assaulted Gaingos about two months before the death of her son by throwing a stone at her, striking her in the ribs.

Somaeb admitted at the start of his trial in March last year that he murdered Gaingos (27) at Outjo on 31 July 2013. He killed her by stabbing her 21 times with a knife, Somaeb said in a plea explanation given to the court.

In his testimony, Somaeb said Remember, whom he helped raise since the boy was a little over a year old, and the three-year-old daughter he had with Gaingos, were at home with him on the evening before the boy’s death.

At that stage, Gaingos had been away from home since the previous day, he said.

Somaeb said his daughter with Gaingos was crying non-stop for her mother, and he then took a sandal and gave her a hiding to stop her crying. He also gave the boy a hiding, hitting him three times on his backside, and then warned him not to walk around town looking for his mother like he and his half-sister had been doing that day, he said.

While he was talking to Remember, the boy was retreating from him and fell backwards over a bench, hitting his head on the floor in the process, Somaeb said.

When Remember complained of having pain after that, he gave him a quarter of a pain tablet. Remember later went to lie down on the bed he had made with blankets on the floor of the house, and that was where he found the boy dead the next morning, Somaeb said.

He was arrested over the alleged murder of Remember on 23 May 2013, and was released from custody after he had paid bail nine days later, Somaeb testified.

Two months after that, Gaingos was killed when Somaeb attacked her with a knife.

Somaeb is due to proceed with his testimony on 12 July, when state advocate Simba Nduna is expected to continue cross-examining him.

Somaeb is being represented by defence lawyer Johan van Vuuren, on instructions from the Directorate of Legal Aid.

He is being kept in custody.