Accused ‘had sex after killing teen’

The former lover of a man accused of severely assaulting a young teenager and setting her alight said that after the gruesome murder he came home and had sex with her as if nothing untoward had happened.

Moments later, police and residents came knocking at their door.

Xolani Nyangwa, 24, allegedly kidnapped 14-year-old Wendy Beyi from outside a tavern in Motherwell on September 30 2017, and took her to a semi-built house in Mvokontshi Street in NU29.

The prosecution alleges he hit her with objects, kicked her with his boots and then wrapped her small body in material and set it alight.

When police arrived at the scene, she was still burning.

A doctor who performed the postmortem said she could not say for sure whether or not the girl had still been alive when she was set alight.

Nyangwa, who is out on bail, pleaded not guilty to the charges in the Port Elizabeth High Court. However, he claims he was present when Wendy was murdered and that he was forced to help move her body and burn it.

The girl’s mother, Lungiswa Beyi, quietly sat in the public gallery as DNA and blood splatter experts testified on Wednesday.

Beyi was only called to the stand briefly to identify her teenage daughter’s shoe in a crime scene album.

Nyangwa’s former lover, Masibulele Mntuyedwa, said after they had slept together on the morning of October 1 2017, she noticed an injury to his finger that was taped up.

He was in the process of telling her that he had cut his finger on a barbed wire fence when they heard the commotion of residents and the police at their bedroom door.

“A police officer entered the room and said a person named Wendy had been murdered.

“I did not know who Wendy was,” Mntuyedwa said.

Asked by state advocate Marius Stander if Nyangwa had informed her of any murders that had occurred the night before, she said that he had not.

“So he just came home, climbed into bed, and had intercourse with you?” Stander asked.

“Yes,” she responded.

She said police then confiscated Nyangwa’s clothing.

Nyangwa and Mntuyedwa had met up at a tavern in NU10 during the evening of September 30.

She had later accompanied him to his shack but he then changed out of the white top he had been wearing.

She said he had put a red top on with his jeans and went back to another tavern in the area.

She climbed into bed and fell asleep.

Early the following morning, she woke up with him beside her and they had sex.

Forensic pathologist Dr Annemarie Matteus, who had conducted the postmortem, said Wendy’s injuries were extensive.

She died from blunt force injury to the head in conjunction with being set alight.

Her lower limbs and pelvis were mostly absent due to the charring of the body and therefore a rape examination could not be performed.

Wendy suffered blunt force injury of the brain, skull fractures and both cheekbones were fractured, Matteus said.

“There were pieces of stone or gravel found in her throat, either from having inhaled it or from having her face pushed into the gravel.”

Crime scene expert investigator Warrant Officer Phillip Bekker, meanwhile, said he had been asked to study photographs of the injury to Nyangwa’s finger.

He said while it was consistent with an injury sustained during a fall or from a cinder, it was not possible that the injury was as a result of a cut from a fence.

“It was definitely not a barbed wire fence that caused the injury. That would have resulted in a tear,” Bekker said.

Warrant Officer Igshaan Kenny, of the South African Police Service Forensic Science Laboratory, testified that the blood splatter found on Nyangwa’s jeans matched that of the victim.

The trial continues on Friday.