REHOBOTH resident Bryan Rickerts’ second murder trial in the Windhoek High Court has left him with a 40-year prison term.“He has taken two lives too many, and must be stopped,” Christie Liebenberg said when he sentenced Rickerts (37) yesterday at the end of the second trial in which he has been convicted of murder.
The previous prison term to which Rickerts was sentenced in May 1999, after he had been found guilty of murder for the first time, seems to have had no effect on him, as he again committed crimes of violence after his release from jail, Judge Liebenberg commented.
He referred to the fact that Rickerts was found guilty of assault in March 2011 after he had stabbed someone in the neck with a knife, and that he then committed his second murder at Rehoboth on 7 February 2014 by fatally stabbing a childhood friend with a knife.
Rickerts’ history of previous criminal convictions showed he had a propensity for violence and to use dangerous weapons, Judge Liebenberg remarked.
He said it appeared to him there was a strong possibility that Rickerts would reoffend, and that his violent behaviour made him a danger to society.
He added that it seemed inescapable that Rickerts must be stopped at any cost from repeating similar crimes as the ones of which he has already been convicted.
Rickerts was 20 years old when he was found guilty of murder for the first time. That murder was committed at Rehoboth in April 1998, while Rickerts was still 19 years old.
Rickerts’ first victim was a 26-year-old woman whom he killed by assaulting her and striking her on the head with a stone, fracturing her skull, while the two of them were walking to a drinking place.
Rickerts claimed during his trial that he was defending himself from an attack by the woman, whom he said had slapped him and was trying to hit him again after he had asked her why she had sworn at him the previous day.
The charge on which Judge Liebenberg convicted Rickerts last week flowed from the killing of a 34-year-old man, Shaun Roderick Beukes, at a shebeen at Rehoboth on 7 February 2014.
Beukes died after Rickerts had stabbed him in the heart with a knife.
Before the stabbing, Rickerts had made a remark to witnesses at the shebeen that he was looking for strong people in the yard of the shebeen and was going to kill them, the court heard during the trial.
Having made his intentions clear, Rickerts then identified Beukes and stabbed him, before running away from the scene.
Rickerts claimed during his trial that he was drunk to such an extent that he had no recollection of the events.
Judge Liebenberg rejected that defence, finding that Rickerts’ conduct showed he knew very well what he was doing.
During the sentencing yesterday, he said Rickerts’ state of inebriation played a role in the murder, though.
The killing was unprovoked and irrational, considering that Rickerts told the court he and Beukes had been friends since childhood, the judge said.
Defence lawyer Milton Engelbrecht represented Rickerts during his trial.
State advocate Jack Eixab prosecuted.
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