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A KOMBI driver was beginning an 18-year stretch in jail last night after admitting to killing a drunk passenger by hitting him in the head with a 4kg concrete block. Naison Sibanda (31), of Pumula South, inflicted serious head injuries on Martin Davirai (32) as he lay in a ditch, and then walked home and told his landlord: “I’ve just killed somebody.”
The Bulawayo High Court heard that victim Davirai was in fact alive, but would die a day later at Mpilo Central Hospital following the attack shortly after 10pm on 19 December last year.
Justice Lawrence Kamocha, sitting at the Bulawayo High Court, told Sibanda he had acted “cruelly” with an unnecessary show of force, even as the court found that Davirai was the aggressor.
Drunk out of his wits, the court heard how Davirai – who had boarded the commuter omnibus from the city – provoked other passengers before Sibanda ordered him to calm down. The two men then exchanged words before Davirai disembarked near Ashy’s Supermarket in Pumula South.
In his defence, Sibanda told the court that Davirai had then gone round to the driver’s side, opened the door and slapped him.
Sibanda admitted punching Davirai, who fell into a ditch. He testified that Davirai tried to pull a bottle from a plastic bag intending to strike him with it, and he had struck first with the concrete block.
Passing sentence, Justice Kamocha rejected Sibanda’s testimony that by the time he hit him with the block, Davirai was in a standing position.
“That’s an after-thought, your statement to the police and evidence in chief were not in corroboration. You acted cruelly when you went on to strike Davirai on the head, when he had already fallen into a ditch and lay helplessly,” the judge told Sibanda.
Justice Kamocha found extenuating circumstances in that Davirai was the aggressor and his actions amounted to provocation. But the judge said the sentence would “meet justice”.
Nokuthaba Ngwenya, prosecuting, told the court that as a public transport driver, Sibanda should have taken Davirai’s behaviour “as an occupational hazard and exercised restraint”.
In mitigation, defence lawyer Mazhar Petkar said Sibanda had no intention to kill and had acted in self defence as Davirai was the aggressor.
Online Reporter