DISPUTE OVER FARM LED TO WOMAN’S DEATH

HLATIKHULU – It has emerged that an alleged dispute over a farm resulted in the horrendous slaying of KaMfishane Bucopho Thoko Maseko.

The disappearance of the 70-year-old woman last Sunday, November 18, 2018 filled the small community of KaMfishane with horror. On that sunny Sunday afternoon, an abandoned house in the area was turned into a slaughter house, where the woman was allegedly slain after being intercepted by a young man, while on her way home from church, in an inexcusable act of wickedness.

As the 38-year-old Sonnyboy Shane Harris would later confess to sleuths, he stopped the woman in order to have a conversation with her relating to some strange happenings that have allegedly dogged his life lately. The young man related to detectives that his family had of late been haunted by bad luck and reportedly blamed the elderly woman for his troubled life after a traditional healer he went to laid bare his misfortunes.

tragic

The genesis of Harris’ grudge with the woman began many years before that tragic afternoon, with an alleged sale of a farm in the area. According to Harris, the farm belonged to his family but had been sold under unclear circumstances and he believed that the 70-year-old woman, who was also related to his family, had a hand in its sale.

The matter had been contested through attorneys hired by the Harris family, but there had been no amicable resolution.
From then on, as the young man would tell the investigators, he had a grievance against the elderly woman. It gradually grew into a bitter hatred, which culminated into thinking that she was also responsible for his misfortunes.

friction

Harris was a college student but his obsession about the farm issue brought him into a friction with the woman, whom she later allegedly intercepted on her way home from church on the tragic Sunday.
He reportedly told investigators that on the day he came across Maseko, he was carrying an axe and a rope, all of which he alleged he was going to use for ferrying some trees.

He said when he saw the woman approaching in a pathway leading to her homestead, he decided to face her. He recalled how she saw the woman cowering into a nearby abandoned homestead, and tried to open the gate.

trembled

He said he greeted her but she did not utter a single word. Instead, he narrated that she trembled and tried to fiddle with something inside her bag. Later, Harris, who described himself as almost petrified with fright, from the awkward encounter, also tried to hold the woman’s hands and got scratched as she tried to push him away.

He told the detectives that, because there had already been a struggle between the two of them, he felt it would be unsafe for him to let the woman go.
He said he thought it would have been a good plan to just finish her off there and then, because he didn’t know how she would react to the incident.

strangulation

So, he allegedly caused Thoko Maseko’s death by strangulation. He told investigators he used his bare hands to asphyxiate the elderly woman. Then he said he tried to drag the woman’s body to the abandoned house, where he had intended to hang it in order to make it appear like a suicide.

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