A KHORIXAS resident accused of killing his domestic partner with an axe in December 2022 has been found guilty of murder after standing trial in the Windhoek High Court.
Judge Claudia Claasen convicted the man, Barnabas Nawaseb (32), on a count of murder, read with the provisions of the Combating of Domestic Violence Act, in a judgement delivered on Friday.
Claasen rejected Nawaseb’s claims that he struck his domestic partner, Metihisia Tanises (32), with an axe in self-defence in their home at Khorixas during the early hours of 21 December 2022.
Considering the type of object that Nawaseb used to hit Tanises, the part of her body to which the blows he inflicted were directed, the type of injuries she sustained and Nawaseb’s behaviour after the incident, she could conclude he had an intention to kill Taniseb, Claasen said in her judgement.
Taniseb was lying in a pool of blood on her bed when she was found dead in her bedroom on the morning of 21 December 2022.
Her four-year-old child was sleeping next to her on the bed when she was found dead.
During Nawaseb’s trial, the court heard that Taniseb had gone to the Khorixas Police Station the previous day to lay a complaint about domestic violence against Nawaseb.
She also requested the police to remove Nawaseb and his belongings from their house, which was done the same day.
Nawaseb told the court that he and Taniseb had been involved in an argument before she went to the police to ask that he be removed from their house.
He said around midnight that day, Taniseb came to him and asked him to return to their house, which he did.
Nawaseb also claimed that Taniseb again started an argument with him after he had returned to their house, and that he then wanted to leave, but the door of the dwelling was secured with a padlock.
He said Taniseb told him she did not know where the key for the padlock was, and he then took an axe with which he wanted to break the padlock.
However, Taniseb grabbed him, pulled him to their bedroom and also grabbed his testicles, Nawaseb said.
Nawaseb said he hit Taniseb with the axe more than once, but could not remember more than the first blow that he struck.
He also said he did not realise he could injure her by hitting her with the blunt side of the axe head.
After he had struck her, he left the house through a window and went to sleep at his cousin’s house, Nawaseb said.
Taniseb was sitting on her bed, crying, when he left the house, he claimed.
A medical doctor who carried out a post-mortem examination on Taniseb testified that her skull was fractured in several places. He also disagreed with a suggestion that Taniseb had been hit with the blunt side of an axe, and said in his opinion she was struck with the sharp side of the instrument.
On Nawaseb’s version that Taniseb had asked him to return to their house around midnight, Claasen remarked that she found it unlikely that a mother of two small children, aged five and four years, would have left her children home alone and gone to fetch a person she had asked to be removed earlier that day.
Nawaseb, who is being held in custody, is due to return to court for a presentence hearing on 16 May.
State advocate Basson Lilungwe is prosecuting.
Legal aid lawyer Petrus Grusshaber is representing Nawaseb.
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