Koos Welcome Mahlangu (37) was charged in connection with three incidents of rape next to the N11 (Hendrina Road) and the N4 off ramp. His trial started in the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court.<\/p>\n
A statement handed in as evidence states how two policemen, who accompanied Mahlangu to his place of residence to verify his address after he was arrested, became suspicious because there were several handbags and cellphones in his room.<\/p>\n
The state alleges that in April last year, he tied a 26 year-old woman up and raped her at gunpoint. He also allegedly robbed her of her cellphone and a bag with clothes.<\/p>\n
Two months later in June, Mahlangu is accused of raping his second victim, an 18 year-old woman, at the N4 off ramp on the N11 near Middelburg. She too was allegedly held at gunpoint, taken into the veld, tied up and raped before he stole her cellphone.<\/p>\n
The third rape charge against Mahlangu is connected to an incident in July 2014 when a woman was raped and her jewelry, wristwatch, two cellphones and cash were stolen. He also faces a kidnapping charge for tying the woman up and leaving her hidden in some bushes in the veld.<\/p>\n
The last two charges, that of the pointing of a firearm and assault, relates to an incident at Wonderfontein where he pointed a gun at Rose Skosana and assaulted her by grabbing her by her clothes.<\/p>\n
He will appear in court again today (Friday).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 37 year-old man who resides on the Wonderfontein Farm, pleaded not guilty to nine criminal charges including rape, kidnapping and robbery with aggravating circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":33277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Jana Boshoff","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}