Seaview trio get 25 years

Long list of previous convictions leads to extended sentences

JUST moments after one of Port Elizabeth’s most notorious gangsters was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder yesterday, he turned around and said to an elderly woman in the gallery: “Don’t worry, ma [mom], I will appeal.”

A seemingly unfazed Rodwell “Boef” Peters, 33, who claims to be a rehabilitated gangster, was then led to the holding cells with his accomplices, Cedric Johnson, 30, and Oscar Alexander, 34.

It was their long list of previous convictions and the prevalence of the offence that prompted Judge Glenn Goosen to sentence them in the Port Elizabeth High Court to an effective 25 years each on charges including housebreaking with intent to rob and robbery, kidnapping and murder.

They broke into a Seaview home on June 1 2013, and tied up owner Adel van Rensburg and ransacked her house.

When a Nitrous Security guard responded to the scene, a shootout occurred and their accomplice, Allan de Sousa, was shot dead.

Peters, Johnson and Alexander were convicted of his murder.

Goosen said it needed to be remembered how the robbery plan had come about.

He said the men – with other members of the Upstand Dogs gang – had gathered to mourn the death of one of their own just hours before the robbery.

“But this did not put them off. It is precisely this disregard [for life] that later resulted in [De Sousa’s] death,” Goosen said.

“[De Sousa] played a role in his own death, but so did the accused. Just because he was an accomplice does not mean the accused deserve less of a sanction. He undoubtedly left family behind.”

Goosen said the personal circumstances of the accused were not exactly favourable.

Johnson had his first run-in with the law when he was convicted of housebreaking in 2001. He was 15 at the time.

He was convicted of a further six offences, including theft and robbery, before 2009.

Peters had five previous convictions for assault and drug-related offences dating back to 2001.

Alexander only had one previous conviction, for the illegal trade of alcohol. Referring to the robbery count, Goosen said the scourge of housebreaking in the city had resulted in residents living in fear.

“A house robbery such as this, in the dead of the night, has become all too familiar,” he said.

The robbery was well thought out and the victim was a woman on her own.

Goosen said it was not known what would have happened if Nitrous Security had not intervened so swiftly. The men were each sentenced to 15 years in prison for housebreaking with intent to rob and robbery, five years for kidnapping and 15 years for murder.

Johnson was also sentenced to three years for illegal possession of a firearm. Goosen ordered that the house robbery, kidnapping and possession charges run concurrently and that five of the 15 years for murder run concurrently with the robbery sentence. A PORT Elizabeth woman was sentenced to eight years in prison this week for defrauding a Christian community radio station out of more than R800 000.

Angeline Smith was working as an accounts clerk at Kingfisher FM when the thefts took place between October 2012 and January last year.

In pleading guilty to the charges in the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court, Smith said she had sent letters to the station’s debtors, stating that their banking details had changed. She substituted the banking details with her own, or those of a family member.

On Wednesday, magistrate Louis Claassen sentenced her to an effective eight years’ imprisonment.