20 years in jail for city knife murderer

A young man found guilty of a knife murder committed in the Suiderhof area of Windhoek four years ago received the heaviest prison term in a regional court’s power when his trial came to an end yesterday.

Windhoek Regional Court magistrate Victor Nyazo sentenced Marcel Groenewald (23) to 20 years’ imprisonment on a charge of murder, while a second accused in the same matter, Paul Loots (27), was sentenced to an effective jail term of four years.

Loots was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to the crime of murder in the same judgement in which Nyazo convicted Groenewald of murder on 17 April. Groenewald and Loots were accused of murdering Samuel Koopman (45) by stabbing him in the stomach with a knife in Windhoek on 1 February 2020.

The two men were arrested two days after Koopman was found dead along Andimba Toivo ya Toivo Street in Windhoek’s Suiderhof area.
He had died of a large stab and cut wound to his abdomen.

Koopman had a painful death, Nyazo said during the sentencing.

Noting that Groenewald told the court he had remorse and that he asked Koopman’s family to forgive him, Nyazo said he found it difficult to accept that Groenewald expressed genuine contrition about the killing.

Instead, Groenewald had regret about how being convicted of murder changed his life, Nyazo said.

Turning to Loots, the magistrate said he did not appreciate the consequences of the crime that was committed, which showed he too did not have remorse. Instead of driving away from the scene where Koopman was fatally injured and bled to death, Loots could have taken him to a hospital, called an ambulance or tried to stop Koopman’s bleeding, Nyazo said. Groenewald and Loots denied guilt during their trial, which started in February last year. During the trial, Groenewald testified that he confronted Koopman with a knife after discovering that his Playstation game console had been stolen from Loots’ car. According to Groenewald, Koopman attacked him when he saw the knife Groenewald had with him.

Groenewald said he and Koopman both fell to the ground, and that Koopman must have sustained the fatal injury to his abdomen when they fell and had a struggle for the possession of the knife.

Loots told the court he was in his pickup during the altercation between Groenewald and Koopman, which he said he did not see.

He also said when he left the scene with Groenewald he knew something had happened there. In the judgement he delivered in April, Nyazo said the fatal wound to Koopman’s abdomen could not have been inflicted accidentally, considering its size, but was the result of an intentional act.

He was not convinced by Groenewald’s version of the event, he added.

Nyazo also said he did not believe Loots’ version that he did not see what happened between Groenewald and Koopman.

Groenewald and Loots, who were represented by defence counsel Jan Wessels, were both free on bail until the delivery of the verdict in their trial. The state was represented by Ellen Shipena.