A Margate man admitted in the Pietermaritzburg High Court that he suffocated a seven-year-old girl while raping her.
|||Pietermaritzburg - A Margate man admitted in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Tuesday that he suffocated a seven-year-old girl while raping her.
Bulelani Jula, 23, pleaded guilty to raping and murdering the girl on June 11 this year, as well as raping a woman last month.
Acting Judge Thoba Poya-Dlwati convicted him of two rapes and the murder.
Jula will be sentenced on Wednesday.
In a statement read out on his behalf, Jula he said he saw the girl and two other younger ones playing.
“I gave them some vetkoek and lured the seven-year-old into a forest,” he said in the statement.
“I ordered her to undress, but she started to cry. I grabbed her throat to stifle her cries.
“I raped her and when I finished I saw she was no longer breathing. It led me to conclude that she was dead and (I) fled.”
Jula also admitted that he followed a woman home on a rainy day and raped her. He fled when he heard her husband arrive home.
Jula said he had been drinking before the crimes, but was not drunk and his faculties were not impaired. - Sapa