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Victim who survived another alleged attack says the suspect told him he was seeking revenge for his daughter's rape
A former rugby player has been arrested after allegedly decapitating one man and murdering two others with an axe. A fourth potential victim claimed the 34-year-old told him that he was seeking revenge after his daughter was gang-raped and infected with HIV.
The suspect is a former player for the Blue Bulls, a top rugby team based in Pretoria. Another Bulls player, Bees Roux, is awaiting trial after allegedly beating a black policeman to death in a separate incident.
But unlike Roux, the axe murder suspect is black and there is "no racial context" for the killings, police said.
Police spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Mdunge said the man, who never played international rugby for South Africa, has three murder charges and one charge of attempted murder against him. The alleged crimes all occurred in the past two weeks.
"One victim was decapitated completely," Mdunge said. "His head was chopped off with an axe. The head was found in a refuse bin one kilometre away from the body."
The other victims had also been hacked in the neck. Their bodies were found in suburbs south of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province.
Police arrested the suspect at his home.
Two people are known to have survived attacks by the axe-wielding man, police added. One of them, Khangelani Mdluli, 27, said the man claimed he was seeking revenge for the gang-rape of his daughter and that he confiscated a hired Opel Corsa car along with bloodstained clothes thought to have belonged to one of the victims and an axe about 40cm (16in) long.
Mdluli told the Cape Argus newspaper that he was walking in the suburb of Lamontville last week when a car drove past him slowly.
The driver turned into a driveway, made a three-point turn and drove up behind Mdluli. "He stopped the car, jumped out with an orange plastic bag and walked down the road towards me," Mdluli was quoted as saying by the paper. "I continued walking but I looked at the plastic bag. He said to me: 'Did you know we would ever meet?' "
The man then allegedly accused him of being a rapist, telling him: You think I'm stupid. You infected my daughter with HIV."
Mdluli told the Cape Argus that he asked the man, who was looking agitated, who his daughter was, but the man pulled an axe out of the bag.
"As the axe came down towards my head, I ducked and it scratched my stomach. I started running down the road as he followed me and swore at me. He eventually gave up and turned back to head to his car, which was parked up the road."
Just when Mdluli thought he was safe, he spotted the man driving along another road. "We looked at each other. I ran back and looked for back routes to get home, making it difficult for him to follow me because he was driving. I went straight home and got into bed."
The paper reported that when Mdluli told his family about the incident the next day, they told him that a man from the area, Ndodo Hlongwa, had been decapitated in a similar attack.
Police could not confirm the suspect's alleged motive. The police spokesman, Mdunge, said: "He has not officially admitted that to the police. It was a statement raised by one of the victims. We do not have any substantial evidence of a rape charge levelled by the suspect's daughter."
Last weekend lieutenant colonel Anton Booysen, the police's provincial co-ordinator for psychologically motivated crimes, said members of the public had caught the attacker in the act. "Witnesses to the attacks said they thought the guy was hacking at a dog or an animal of sorts, but then realised it was a human being," Booysen told the Sunday Tribune .
"The people who saw him said he appeared relaxed and confident. During one instance someone shouted at him, 'What the fuck are you doing?' He then apparently stopped and casually walked away, and it didn't seem that he was disturbed at being caught."
It is believed the suspect is from the Eastern Cape province and was visiting relatives in Durban. He is in police custody and due to appear in Durban magistrates court on Thursday morning, when his identity will be made public.