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(TALKZIMBABWE) Girl says 'spirits' told her to murder mum

Girl says 'spirits' told her to murder mum
By: TIL-TZG
Posted: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 11:18 am

A ZIMBABWEAN teenager who has been charged with attempted murder of her mother claims "spirits" had possessed her and were telling her to murder her mother. A policewoman told a jury that the teenager appeared in "some kind of a trance" when arrested for attempting to murder her mother.

PC Patricia Lutz said she found 19-year-old Lorraine Mbulawa crying, shaking and hyperventilating while her mother, Sibusisiwe, tried to comfort her on the stairs of their family home in Braunstone Frith.

The victim Mrs Mbulawa was bleeding heavily, Leicester Crown Court heard yesterday.

PC Lutz told the court during the second day of the teenager's trial: "The older woman was covered extensively in blood, holding her left arm up.
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"I could see a lot of flesh hanging down from the arm.

"Considering the injuries, she was calm and collected and holding on to the younger female, giving reassurance."

PC Lutz said the mother said her daughter had stabbed her with a knife as she slept in bed.

The officer said Mbulawa, then 18, was mumbling to herself.

Then she took a deep breath and said: "My dad, my dad.

"My Nan told me my dad has been killed by my mother," the court heard.

She also cried: "She's here to get me."

PC Lutz said: "She kept staring over my shoulder and continuing to cry."

After being placed in a police van, Mbulawa was checked by a paramedic and found to have a normal pulse.

The officer said she was co-operative and appeared to calm down on the journey to the police station, where she then chatted to an officer taking hand swabs.

When told again, at the police station, she was under arrest on suspicion of the attempted murder of her mother, she appeared astonished and replied: "Why would I do that?"

PC Lutz confirmed she accurately wrote in her police statement, read out in court: "During the custody procedure she (Mbulawa) was as if she was another person, calm and collected.

"But when I first arrived (at the house) she appeared to be in some kind of a trance."

Mbulawa, a former Leicester Gateway College student, of Tatlow Road, Braunstone Frith, denies the attempted murder of her 43-year-old mother, who is a nurse.

She claims she had a "dream" and her dead grandmother's spirit told her that her mother had killed her father – who alleged died suddenly after collapsing at their former home in Zimbabwe in 2000.

She claims her grandmother, who died about a year later, instructed her to avenge her father's death.

The court heard Mbulawa's paternal grandmother and aunt had caused a family rift soon after the father's death, by blaming her mother.

While being attacked by her daughter, who was wearing a balaclava-style mask, gloves and dark clothes, Mrs Mbulawa grabbed the knife.

At first she thought the assailant was a burglar and was shocked to realise it was her daughter, the court was told.

She rang her brother, Anthony Ncube, of Mowmacre Hill, Leicester, asking for his help, just after midnight on May 13, 2009.

He alerted police and went to her home, where he found his injured sister cradling her daughter in her arms, comforting her.

Mr Ncube said his sister told him she "momentarily froze" when she realised her daughter was her attacker.

He said she told him she thought her daughter was "possessed".

The mother earlier told the jury she believed in witchcraft and evil spirits and said her daughter did not seem her real self during the incident.

Mrs Mbulawa suffered four stab wounds to her left arm and a cut to the side of her face which needed stitching.

The prosecution allege Mbulawa deliberately tried to kill her mother and was feigning being possessed or in a trance.

The trial continues.

Labels: COURTS

posted by MrK @ 3:17 PM