One of the men who pushed an emerging Limpopo artist from the seventh floor of a block of flats in Pretoria has been slapped with a life term.

Shaun Douglas Chabalala and a friend were lured to the “notorious” Tamboti block of flats in Sunnyside through a fake online advertisement for the sale of a camera in May 2018.

The friend, Given Mzamane, managed to escape, but the 23-year-old was pushed through a window from the seventh floor after they discovered it was a trap.

Onyeghani Ekene Dumkele and another suspect, who absconded after being granted R3,000 bail, pushed Chabalala to his death.

On Monday, the Pretoria magistrate's court sentenced the 37-year-old to life behind bars, police spokesperson Capt Daniel Mavimbela said.

“Additionally, a 15-year jail term was imposed on Dumkele for aggravated robbery, plus a 12-month suspended sentence on condition that he is deported to his native country after he completes his concurrent sentence for murder and aggravated robbery.

“Dumkele was arrested almost 15 months after the murder by Sunnyside police detective Capt Simon Motolla, who had decided to abandon a wedding celebration that he had attended in Mpumalanga after he was tipped off on the whereabouts of the accused,” Mavimbela said.

According to police, Dumkele was sniffed out from the ceiling inside a house in Pretoria West by a police dog.

When he was arrested, Dumkele tried to blame the murder on his missing co-accused, Obienna Ofoegbuliwe, but this was “rejected  by the court since he knew that among others [that] the police had been searching for him, had not disclosed the identity of the killer before his arrest and was easily pointed out by Mzamane during the identification parade”, Mavimbela said.

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