A YOUNG man accused of murdering his former girlfriend in the Outjo State Hospital, where she was being treated for stab wounds that he had inflicted on her a day earlier, made his first pretrial appearance in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.
Hendrik !Nowoseb’s first pretrial hearing in the High Court, where he is due to stand trial on charges of murder, attempted murder, and housebreaking with intent to murder and attempted murder, was brief, with his case being postponed to 22 June to give his defence lawyer time to prepare his plea.
Judge Naomi Shivute ordered that !Nowoseb (25) should be held at the Windhoek Correctional Facility in the meantime.
The prosecution alleges that !Nowoseb, while armed with a knife, forced his way into a house at Outjo during the evening of 6 December 2014, and once inside, attacked the 24-year-old Willemina Tsauses with the knife.
Tsauses, who had previously been in a relationship with !Nowoseb, was stabbed in her upper body during the attack.
Her boyfriend at the time was also present in the room where she was attacked, and he, too, was stabbed by !Nowoseb when he tried to come to Tsauses’ aid, the state charges. !Nowoseb allegedly fled the scene after the stabbing. Tsauses was admitted at the Outjo State Hospital following the attack. The next day, she was killed in her hospital bed.
The state charges that !Nowoseb went to the hospital to look for Tsauses on 7 December 2014, and again attacked her with a knife when he found her.
She was killed when she was stabbed multiple times in the upper body and neck, the prosecution states.
!Nowoseb was arrested at the hospital.
A month after his arrest in Tsauses’ killing, !Nowoseb was also charged with another count of murder. That charge stemmed from an incident in which a resident of Outjo, Gert Koekemoer (72), was stabbed to death at his home during an armed robbery in October 2014. !Nowoseb’s case over the killing of Koekemoer continues in the Outjo Magistrate’s Court.
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