Ashwin Jones' granny thankful to State prosecutor after two get heavy sentences for his murder
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Brenda Rudolph thanked advocate Kepler Uys for his work in securing conviction for the two gang members who murdered her 12-year-old grandson, Ashwin Jones. Picture: Supplied
Cape Town - The grandmother who raised Ashwin Jones thanked the State prosecutor after the two men convicted of the boy’s murder were sentenced in the Western Cape High Court.
Brenda Rudolph expressed her gratitude for the work done by advocate Kepler Uys after Enrico Slamat, 22, and Jonothan Solomons, 44, were sentenced to 48 years and life imprisonment respectively.
The 12-year-old was shot and killed during a gang shooting outside a mosque in Uitsig on May 31, 2019. Rudolph said she was still struggling with the death of her grandson.
“The way they shot my grandchild, I can still see it in my mind. It was opposite my house, the mother was standing there and she saw how they shot him.”
The family were too afraid to testify because the mother received threats from gang members who told her she would be killed if she came to court.
The grandmother, who cared for the boy since he was eight months old, said the loss of Ashwin still haunts her.
“He was the child who brought sunshine into the house and nothing can fill the void that is left by his passing.”
Slamat was sentenced to 25 years for the murder while Solomons was sentenced to life. They both received an additional 15 years for the attempted murders of three people, five years for possession of an unlicensed firearm and three years for possession of ammunition.
During sentencing, Acting Judge Raadiyah Wathen-Falken considered the traditional factors with regards to her ruling, which included personal circumstances, the seriousness of the offence and the interests of the community.
She said the fact that Slamat was a first-time offender, his age and the circumstances surrounding his arrest provided substantial and compelling circumstances allowing her to deviate from the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment.
Solomons had a number of previous convictions for crimes committed since the age 15, but the judge made special mention of six of his previous convictions from 1995-2001 due to its violent nature. He is currently serving a sentence for another murder committed two months after Ashwin’s murder.
The judge said: “The community of Elsies River, Uitsig and the general area are under threat of constant violence. What is worrying is that an overwhelming number of cases where there is gang violence and gang fighting involved, it is not the intended victims who fall folly but the innocent who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Photographs from the crime scene showed Ashwin was still wearing his school trousers when he was killed.
“We now know that Ashwin’s small framed body had to endure nine bullet wounds as he was running away. No sentence can bring back the life of Ashwin Jones but we need to find the best sentence so that we cannot have a recurrence of these circumstances,” Acting Judge Wathen-Falken said.