A 33-year-old man who stabbed a Pretoria prosecutor 14 times in her office while stealing her cellphone was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in the Pretoria High Court on Friday.
Judge Tholi Vilakazi sentenced Sipho Mnisi to eight years’ imprisonment for attempting to murder prosecutor Marisa Booyse in her office at the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court in September last year.
He grabbed Booyse’s cellphone and, when she tried to stop him, he attacked and stabbed her 14 times.
He was also sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment on a charge of robbery with aggravating circumstances, but the judge ordered that both sentences run concurrently.
Mnisi claimed he had never intended to kill Booyse and only stole her cellphone because he needed money to feed his children.
Vilakazi said Mnisi’s long list of previous convictions, mostly for theft, and a five-year jail term imposed for one of them, showed he was not prepared to keep his hands away from other people’s property and could not be rehabilitated.
It was not known how he passed court security with the knife.
He said it had not been necessary to attack Booyse, because Mnisi could simply have grabbed her phone and run away.
He had acted recklessly and without any regard for her life.
Vilakazi said hefty sentences were needed to send a message to the community that violence would no longer be tolerated.
Mnisi had previously been acquitted on charges of murdering and robbing 18-year-old Peet van der Merwe at the Centurion Mall two years ago because of a lack of credible evidence against him.
Van der Merwe was stabbed to death with a broken beer bottle during a scuffle for his cellphone.
Booyse was not at court, as she was recuperating at home after a further operation to her hand, which was seriously injured in the attack.
Her husband, Louis, said her specialist was of the opinion that the operation would go a long way to alleviate her pain, but it was unlikely that she would ever regain the full use of her hand. She had not returned to work yet and was still receiving counselling.
He was relieved that the accused had been convicted and sentenced. It did not matter how long his sentence was, as it would not change the impact of the attack on his family, he said. — Sapa