Knife pupil expected in court

A 15-year-old schoolboy accused of killing a fellow pupil is expected to appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court today, Gauteng police said.

The boy was arrested and released into his parents’ custody on Wednesday after allegedly stabbing a 16-year-old boy at the Berea Park Independent School.

The two youths, who were friends, allegedly got into a fight about a pencil during second break, said Lt-Col Katlego Mogale.

Donald Molefe died at the scene after being stabbed several times in the chest with a pocket-knife.

The Times newspaper reported on Monday that Molefe’s death was filmed on cellphones by his friends and was being circulated on YouTube.

The school’s headmaster Izak Theron was called to the scene of the fight, “but by the time I arrived, everything had already happened,” he said.

He said he was mystified at the presence of the knife because his pupils were searched at the school gate every morning.

Gauteng education spokesman Charles Phahlane said the department was not involved in the administration of independent schools.

However, it had a sent a team to the school to provide counselling to those affected.

In 2010, the department launched a school safety strategy, as part of which it conducted unannounced raids on schools with the police, confiscating knives and drugs.

Phahlane said the programme did not involve independent schools.