Father guilty of double murder with direct intent

A father was on Friday found guilty of murder with direct intent, read in conjunction with the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act, for the killing of his two minor children.

Shinana was found guilty of having murdered his and Rosalia Antonius's son, Matheus Shinana (6), and their three-year-old daughter, Emilia Naatye Shinana, in Okuryangava in Windhoek during the night of 23 December 2009.

The children were found dead in the house where Shinana lived on the morning of 24 December 2009. Their throats had been cut.

Shinana was found in the same room, with a piece of rope around his neck while another piece of rope hung from a roof beam.

Judge Nate Ndauendapo said in his verdict that Shinana had admitted to the police that he had cut the children's throats with a knife.

Shinana later claimed in court that an intruder had entered the shack, tried to strangle him and killed the children.

The judge said the evidence showed that once the shack was locked with a padlock from inside, it could not be opened from outside.

“The shack had no windows. The accused was lying under a blood-stained knife and a piece of rope around his neck and another piece of rope on the wood in the ceiling,” Ndauendapo said.

“The fact that the shack had no windows showed that the children were killed by the person inside the shack and that person is the accused as nobody else could have entered it,” the judge concluded.

The case was postponed to 24 January 2018 for sentencing.



FRED GOEIEMAN