The suspect has abandoned his bail application. MARCO LONGARI
He doesn’t have enough words to express what he feels.
Hearing that his eight-year-old child had her throat slit in front of her grandmother’s house has left him devastated.
He doesn’t understand how any human being would hurt a child to get back at the mother. His eight-year-old girl is fighting for her life at Pretoria East hospital after her mother’s boyfriend slit her throat and left her to bleed to death.
It is alleged that the couple had a heated altercation and the mother left with her two children, an eight-year-old girl and a five-year-old girl. She was visiting her mom in Khutsong extension in Mamelodi East on Sunday when the attack happened.
While at the grandmother’s place, the mother was at the car wash when the boyfriend arrived looking for her. The boyfriend allegedly waited outside of the yard for hours, until the girl went outside.
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The devastated father tells Drum that they are putting together the pieces but it seems like when the child saw her mom’s boyfriend, she walked over to him. She knew him as they were all living together. He allegedly grabbed her by her hair and slit her throat and left her on the ground to bleed to death. Her grandmother found her lying in a pool of blood and was able to get help in time.
The boyfriend was allegedly seen in the area.
The father says his daughter and her younger sister lived with their mother and the boyfriend in Montana. He says the boyfriend and the mother argued and when the mother asked the man to leave, he refused.
“He then resorted to slitting my daughter’s throat in retaliation towards the mother. He went into the grandparents’ house and slit the child’s throat execution-style with a knife. The child’s mother then called the police when she returned, finding her daughter’s throat was slit. She was admitted to the hospital and is now in ICU. She was stabilised in Mamelodi hospital and transferred to Pretoria East hospital,” the father says.
The father says he is not coping with the news very well and everyone around him is expecting him to be strong and that is a bit unfair. He had to watch his child lying in a hospital bed in pain and having social workers and therapists talking to her, and she has to relive the incident all over.
But he is hoping that the process helps the child deal with this traumatic experience.
“I am trying to hold myself together especially for the kid because I think this is too much for any parent. When a man just takes your child and slits her throat trying to get back to him or hurting the girlfriend by hurting a child that is not even his child, it is a horrible thing to experience as a father. I feel angry as the father and I don’t understand how this guy can do something like this because of their disagreement,” he says.
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He says this is an act of someone heartless.
“I think he is a guy who is used to doing this because you can’t just do this out of the blue just because you are fighting with the mother of the child.
“I saw the guy before because we have joint custody of the kids after our divorce, so I saw the guy twice when I was picking up the kids. And he once called me when there was an issue with the kids, I wouldn’t say I knew much about him but I know that he exists and lives with my kids.”
The boyfriend appeared in court Thursday and his lawyer abandoned the bail application. The father says it was this court case that revealed that the boyfriend had other GBV-related cases and is wanted by the police for these charges dating back to 2019.
“The guy got charged with another GBV crime yesterday during his appearance, he had a lawyer and the lawyer abandoned the bail application for now. They have been looking for him since 2019 so they just found him. And we hear that this guy has been arrested at least not less than seven times before this incident and four cases have been withdrawn,” says the father.
He says he hopes the justice system works because it is clear that they are dealing with a ruthless person who is used to getting away with violence against women and children.
The boyfriend appeared at Mamelodi West regional court and will be back in court on 30 May.