“Gunman had been begging MSU student to rekindle relationship before fatal shooting”

The caretaker of a boarding house in Senga KMP, Gweru, has described how she found four Midlands State University (MSU) students locked in a room with the body of their friend after an alleged shooting.

The shooting happened at about 5.30 pm on Thursday at Number 1082, Senga KMP. Police are looking for Godknows Muleya, a director of a Bulawayo-based security company, in connection with the death of 25-year-old Lisedi Nkomo, a Level Four, First Semester student at MSU. She was allegedly shot in the forehead.

The caretaker, Blessing Nkomo, said she had left home that afternoon to collect a mattress in the city centre. As she was leaving, she saw a man dressed in blue at the property and greeted him. She assumed he was a relative visiting a student. She also noticed a grey or dark-silver vehicle parked on the grass but did not note the registration.

While she was in town, one of the students called her in distress and asked if she was safe and in her room. Nkomo told her she was not at home and asked her to check the rooms.

The student found some doors open and a man in a hooded jacket moving around the property. When students went into the passage to investigate, he allegedly threatened to shoot them, took their phones and ordered them inside.

“He took their phones and ordered them to get inside. Four of the students were forced into one room, the same room where my tenant was shot. He locked them inside and threw their phones into a bathtub,” Nkomo said.

Nkomo and her husband abandoned their errand to seek help. Officers at a roadblock linked them to a CID team travelling to Shurugwi, and she returned to the house with two police officers.

The four students were still locked inside, traumatised and pleading to be released.

“My girls were crying and shouting, ‘Auntie, things are not good here! Open for us!’ They then told me that one of them was dead,” she said.

The students feared the gunman was still inside. The keys were locked in the room, so police asked Nkomo to find a crowbar to force the door open. The students were freed, but Lisedi was dead.

Nkomo said some students had been at the property since February, while Lisedi moved in on 2 August at the start of the current semester.

She later learned from students that the man had visited about two weeks earlier and had allegedly been trying to reconcile with Lisedi. A friend of the deceased said he had previously lived nearby and had pleaded with her to rekindle the relationship. The nature of the relationship is alleged to be that of former husband and wife, which police are still investigating.

The killing has left an infant, estimated to be eight or nine months old, without a mother. Nkomo said the baby is staying with its paternal grandmother.

More: The Herald