The widow of a Walvis Bay resident who was murdered eight years ago says his killers should be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Hans-Jörg Möller (50) was fatally injured when he was shot during a house robbery in 2016.
Four men were convicted of his murder three weeks ago.
“My husband didn’t do any of them any harm. He was sleeping in the house, peacefully,” Carol-Ann Möller said during a presentence hearing in the High Court at Windhoek Correctional Facility yesterday.
The robbers who attacked her and her husband in their home at Walvis Bay during the night of 16 to 17 June 2016 were heartless, knew they were going to kill the father of two small children and should stay in prison for the rest of their lives, Carol-Ann said.
The gang of intruders that carried out the attack on her and her husband took away her family’s breadwinner and also her health, as she has suffered lasting injuries, she said.
“I have no leniency for any of the accused,” she said. “Nobody sees how my children cry,” Carol-Ann added.
Judge Dinnah Usiku postponed the sentencing of the four men convicted in connection with the house robbery to 16 September at the end of the presentence hearing.
State advocate Basson Lilungwe suggested to the judge that Panduleni Gotlieb (39), David Tashiya (37), David Shekundja (43) and Elly Hinaivali (38) should each be sentenced to an effective prison term of 37 years.
They committed carefully planned crimes, “in a most brutal and violent manner” and fatally injured Hans-Jörg by shooting him in his home, where he was supposed to be safe, Lilungwe said.
During their trial, Carol-Ann identified Gotlieb as the person who fired the fatal shot that struck her husband in the abdomen and claimed his life in a hospital a day later.
A pistol found in Gotlieb’s possession at a police roadblock near Ondangwa on the evening of 17 June 2016 was later linked to the bullet that struck Hans-Jörg.
Gotlieb, Tashiya, Shekundja and Hinaivali were found guilty on charges of murder, attempted murder, housebreaking and robbery with aggravating circumstances, conspiring to commit housebreaking and robbery and possession of a firearm and ammunition without a licence three weeks ago.
In his address to the judge, Lilungwe proposed that they should each be sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment on the murder charge, a jail term of seven years on the count of attempted murder and further sentences that can be ordered to be served concurrently with the sentences on the first two charges.
Defence lawyer Mbanga Siyomunji, who is representing Gotlieb, proposed that he be sentenced to an effective prison term of 20 years.
Tashiya’s defence lawyer, Kalundu Kamwi, suggested a sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment on the murder charge, a jail term of six years on the count of attempted murder and that sentences on the other charges should be ordered to run concurrently with the jail term on the murder charge.
Addressing the judge on behalf of Shekundja, legal aid lawyer Tanya Klazen said he has the potential to be a productive member of society and that the case he has been facing for the past eight years has changed his life completely.
Klazen suggested that Shekundja be sentenced to not more than 25 years’ imprisonment on the murder charge and that the sentences on the other charges should run together with the sentence on the count of murder.
Hinaivali’s defence lawyer, Trevor Brockerhoff, asked Usiku to take the charges of murder and attempted murder together for sentencing and to order that the sentences on all of the other charges should be served concurrently with the sentence on the murder count.
Gotlieb, Tashiya, Shekundja and Hinaivali have all been held in custody for the past eight years.
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