The family of Michaela Garoenisha Ganchi was ”very angry” following the postponement on Tuesday of the sentencing of the little girl’s killer.
”We are very angry. This guy is buying time. This [postponement] is unnecessary because he has already been found guilty,” said Ganchi’s uncle Bernard Lee.
About 20 people who attended Tuesday’s proceedings in the Johannesburg High Court were not happy after Judge Winston Msimeki postponed Ronald Ambrose Jones’s sentencing.
”I’m cross. That’s all I can say,” said a woman who identified herself as Ganchi’s aunt.
Jones’s attorney, Mpho Milubi, requested that the case be postponed for the probation officer’s pre-sentencing report. The state did not oppose and Msimeki postponed the matter to May 31.
Jones (27) was found guilty on five counts, including kidnapping and indecent assault, at the beginning of the month.
During the judgement, the court labelled him as an unimpressive witness who contradicted himself on the key aspects of the case.
The court upheld the evidence from all the state witnesses, saying that the prosecution had succeeded in proving a strong case against the accused.
Milubi said the probation officer’s report was important as his client was found guilty on serious charges.
”The charges are very serious, so it is necessary for the probation officer to compile a pre-sentence report,” he told the South African Press Association.
Jones, clad in a white shirt and navy pants, looked calm and spoke to a man in the gallery before he was led down the holding cells.
He had kidnapped the child while she was playing outside her grandparents’ home in Eldorado Park, south of Johannesburg, in October 2005. Her body was found metres from her home the next day. Jones, who lived nearby, was arrested three months later. — Sapa