The KZN dad who fatally stabbed his two young children in an apparent revenge attack against his ex has been sentenced to an effective 30 years in prison.
|||Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal father who last month murdered his two young children in an apparent revenge attack against his ex-girlfriend, was on Friday sentenced to an effective 30 years in prison by the Madadeni High Court.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Shooz Magudulela said the court convicted and sentenced Mkhonzeni Bernard Mdladla, 33, to 30 years imprisonment for the murder of his four-year-old son Bongukwenza Mlungiseni Mdladla, and 30 years for the murder of his six-year-old daughter, Thandiwe Lusanda Madladla.
The court ordered the sentences to run concurrently.
According to police, on May 30 at about 8pm, Mdladla went to his ex-girlfriend's home at the Gudlintaba area of St Chads in Ladysmith, where he found the children sleeping and slaughtered them in their beds.
He stabbed the children in the neck and stomach before fleeing the scene.
When the mother, Nomuhle Mbhele, and grandmother Dumsile Mbhele, returned, having fled the home when Mdladla arrived, they found the children dead in their beds.
The matter was reported to the police and a search was launched for the suspect who was arrested a day later in the Ladysmith CBD.
Shortly after the murders the ANA reported how the mother of the two children had been told by Mdladla that she would “feel a pain that will never heal”.
“I'm trying to seek the answers from the Bible, as to why the father of my children had killed them,” she had said, clutching a Bible. A family friend said the motive behind the killing was “broken love”.
African News Agency