Nkosi Timmy Langa
Durban — After having been confronted with evidence of a purchase from a hardware store made the day after her husband’s kidnapping from their home, a nurse on trial for the alleged murder and kidnapping, refuted that the purchase was to fix a door that had been broken inside her home by hired hitmen.
On Wednesday Nomphumelelo Patricia Goncalves was grilled over the purchase by senior State Prosecutor Advocate Krishen Shah. He also put it to her that this was the reason why she had jammed her vehicle tracker device, to go to the hardware store to buy items to fix the broken door.
Goncalves has been on trial in the Durban High Court along with her brother Nkosinathi Steve Zungu charged with the murder of Transnet engineer Nkosi Timmy Langa.
She denied jamming the tracker device and told the court that she could not remember what she had gone to the hardware store for.
Previously during the trial, a State witness Pieter Andries Oosthuizen with Tracker who testified on a report that detailed the movements of Goncalves’s vehicle had told the court that a jamming device could be the reason why the nurse’s car movements on that day were last seen at 3.30pm and then again only at 5.33pm.
The nurse is alleged to have hired Zungu along with James Mashudu “Ramaphosa” Mthimkhulu who is a state witness and is already serving time for his part in the crime.
On September 29, 2020, Langa was allegedly forced into his Isuzu X-Rider at his home near Hampshire Place in Pinetown and taken to a forest in Ozwathini by Zungu and Mthimkhulu where he was allegedly killed with an electric cord cut from an iron in his home. It was put around his neck and Zungu pulled one end while Mthimkhulu allegedly pulled the other, his body was allegedly left in the forest.
In Goncalves’s re-examination on Thursday her counsel Advocate Siphelele Zwane revisited the issue of the hardware purchase asking her the purpose of going to the hardware store.
However, Shah objected to this question with the reason that Goncalves had given an answer on Wednesday adding that at a later stage, he would argue that there was a particular influence for her answer.
Acting Judge Bonke Dumisa allowed the question cautioning Zwane that the accused despite being asked the question a number of times had not given a straight answer.
“Mthimkhulu told the court that when they were inside the house they broke the door and told you to take care of it, could that be the reason you went there (hardware store), is it a coincidence that the very next day you go to a hardware store,” asked Zwane.
Goncalves conceded that it was a coincidence.
“It was a coincidence because there was no door broken and no door that had to be fixed, all the doors were still the same,” she said.
Throughout the trial which began last year in May, she had denied plotting with her brother and Mthimkhulu to kill and kidnap Langa despite evidence from a State witness who testified that she was in the nurse’s car when she solicited Zungu and Mthimkhulu to kill the engineer with the promise of R15 000 payment.
On Thursday the trial came to an end and Dumisa is to deliver his judgment in the matter sometime next year after hearing arguments on the merits of the case in January from the State and defence.
WhatsApp your views on this story to 071 485 7995.
Daily News