Cape Town - Three child killers have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the Cape High Court and the High Court George Division this week.
Two of the convicted killers have been deemed abusive, jealous and possessive.
Ryan Kyle Smith, the nephew of alleged Sexy Boys gang boss Jerome “Donkie” Booysen, was sentenced by the Cape High Court to life imprisonment this week for the murders of his estranged girlfriend Altecia Kortje and their 7-year-old daughter, Raynecia Kortje, in 2020.
He has been deemed unfit to work with children or to possess a firearm and his name has been recorded in the National Child Protection Register after he was convicted.
The State proved that when Kortje ended her relationship with Smith, he fetched their two children from her parents’ home in Delft without her consent.
He killed Raynecia by throttling her and then drowning her in a wheelie bin filled with water.
He then beat Kortje repeatedly with a fire extinguisher, choked and stabbed her several times.
Smith had been employed as a caretaker in a student residency in Belhar and stayed on the premises
Advocate Nadia Ajam told the court that in 2020 Smith started using drugs repeatedly and became physically and emotionally abusive towards his girlfriend and killed Kortje and Raynecia in June 2020.
The court sentenced the accused to life imprisonment for Kortjes’s murder and 18 years’ imprisonment for Raynecia’s murder but ordered the sentences to run concurrently.
Also in the Cape High Court, a Fast Guns gang member Enrique Williams was sentenced to 30 years behind bars after he shot and killed 6-year-old Nathalia Pienaar in August 2019 in Grindel Avenue in Lavender Hill and wounded a gang member.
The little girl had been playing on the pavement in front of her home when she was shot. Williams received 25 years’ imprisonment for the killing.
Williams was sentenced to a further 12 years’ imprisonment for the attempted murder of Mongrels gang member Ryan Kruger and eight years for the illegal possession of a semi-automatic firearm and ammunition.
The court ordered that seven years of the sentence imposed for attempted murder must run concurrently with the sentence imposed for murder and that sentences imposed for illegal possession of a semi-automatic firearm and three years’ imprisonment for illegal possession of ammunition must also run concurrently with the sentence imposed for the murder charge. The court declared Williams unfit to possess or own a firearm.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said the court emphasised that the community must be heard on how gangs had no right to take the lives of our innocent while they fire at one another.
“The statistics presented during the sentence revealed that during the period April 2019 to April 2021, 130 little human beings lost their lives in gang-related shooting incidents.
“Grown men have no compunction in killing anyone as our innocent people become casualties of war. During the same period, 487 children were victims of gang-related shootings where their lives were taken or nearly taken,” said Ntabazalila.
Zipho Nqoko was sentenced to 25 years’ and five years’ imprisonment at the High Court George Division after he was convicted of the kidnapping and premeditated murder of his former girlfriend’s son, Imange Jantjies, 8.
The sentences will run concurrently.
The State proved that Nqoko had stabbed little Imange 28 times in the back in Thembalethu.
His body was discovered in Nqoko’s shack in August 2021.
It was also the same day that the child’s mother, Anelisiwe Jantjies, had ended the relationship with him.
State prosecutor advocate Lenro Badenhorst proved that Nqoko had been jealous and abusive and had killed the child because the mother had refused to be in a relationship with him.