It was a hit, says Khopolo’s family

The police, on the other hand, insist that Khopolo died from a bullet that perforated his lungs. They are basing their conclusion on statements from two survivors of the lethal attack in Masowe II three weeks ago and the post-mortem report.

In a startling disclosure to a local radio station last week, Khopolo’s widow, ’Mamahali Kholuoe, said while her husband could have died from the bullet wound, he still had another gushing wound behind the left ear.

She said Khopolo also had a fractured skull.

A family friend, Thabang Lethena, corroborated ’Mamahali’s statement to the mourners at the funeral on Sunday.

“I asked Sergeant Maraisane if the wound could be from a bullet. She told me that it was a sharp object,” Lethena said.

Lethena said apart from the wound behind the ear, which he said seemed to have been inflicted with a sharp object, his skull was fractured.

“I went to the crime scene and found blood stains and broken car windows,” Lethena said.

“I pointed a blood-stained stone to an investigating officer at the crime scene,” Lethena said, adding that even the pathologist did not brush aside the hypothesis that Khopolo’s skull could have been cracked “with a stone or a hammer”.

He said the pathologist told him that there was a high probability that someone could have inflicted huge damage using that stone.

Lethena further told the mourners that the buttocks of the deceased were found with wounds yet his car’s seat did not have any bullet holes.

On the floor of the car, they found Khopolo’s buttons from his shirt, which signalled that he could have been manhandled at some point.

Lethena suspected that a well-known famo musician from a rival gang, from his own village of Ribaneng in Mafeteng, could have plotted the murder.

Lethena did not disclose the name of the person but made it clear that it was the man who was with Khopolo in the car when he was killed.

Lethena said the man behind the killing of Khopolo had been in self-exile in South Africa for a long time because he feared for his life in Lesotho.

With the assistance of Khopolo, he said, the man entered the country’s borders through Sterkspruit under the escort of the Lesotho army.

It was on a Thursday when he arrived in the country and he went straight to Makoanyane Barracks, he said.

Then on Friday, two days before Khopolo’s murder, he was taken to Ribaneng still under the army escort, he said.

“He was able to meet his children after many years,” Lethena said.

He said Khopolo secured a guest house for the man in Maseru where he could sleep safely.

Lethena said he pleaded with Khopolo to send the man away from him after their return from Ribaneng as he was already suspicious of him.

“I could see that he did not have Christian intentions like Khopolo,” Lethena said.

On that eventful night, he slept knowing that the man was booked at a guest house but he was only surprised when he received a shocking call from the police at 11pm informing him that Khopolo was no more.

He said he went to the police station in Thetsane where, to his surprise, while he was speaking with Senior Inspector Moeketsi and Sergeant Maraisane, the same man entered without any injuries.

Lethena said the two officers allowed him to ask the man who ‘survived’ the shooting a few questions.

The man, he said, told them that they went to Thetsane to pick up his girlfriend and were ambushed by unidentified men who fled the scene in a 4×4 vehicle.

Lethena said the man told him that they were shot while in the vehicle, pointing at his neck saying that he too was injured.

“But there was nothing on the neck,” Lethena said.

He said the man further told them that he “managed to dodge a bullet that he saw coming to him”.

“I told him that he was extraordinarily skilled if he dodged bullets,” Lethena said.

Inspector ’Mareabetsoe Mofoka, the deputy police spokesperson, told thepost that their focus in the investigation was on “the cause of death for us to open a murder case”.

“As for us, we don’t know of the wound behind the ear that could have been caused by a sharp object,” Insp Mofoka said.

“We are working on a case in which a man and a woman were shot dead,” she said.

“So as far as we know, the post-mortem has identified a gun wound as the cause of death.”

Insp Mofoka said the police align themselves with the post-mortem report to ascertain the cause of death with the purpose to take their case to court, and nothing more.

Senior Superintendent Mpiti Mopeli, the substantive spokesman, said he could not reveal whether they called Lethena to their office to help with investigations.

“Let us protect him,” S/Supt Mopeli said.

“We have to protect him from the very same people,” he said.

The army’s spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Sakeng Lekola, rejected allegations that the army escorted a famo gangster from Sterkspruit to the Makoanyane Barracks and to Ribaneng shortly before Khopolo’s murder.

“I don’t believe the man was escorted by Lesotho soldiers. As you may have heard, there are some people who are disguising themselves as soldiers,” L/Col Lekola said.

He cited a recent case in which some men raided villages in Marakabei claiming to be soldiers in search of illegally owned guns.

Asked what the men were doing at the army barracks with the famo gangster, L/Col Lekola said “it is not true that they went to the Makoanyane Barracks”.

Staff Reporters