A Cape Town man has been jailed for 10 years for trying to kill his ex and two others by dousing them with petrol.
|||Cape Town - A Facreton man has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for trying to kill his ex-girlfriend and two others by dousing them with petrol inside a wendy house.
Cape Town regional magistrate Jan van Zyl found that Shaun Jacobs, 33, tried to kill Gasbeyah Abduragmaan because she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with him.
Abduragmaan’s friends, Anne Petersen and Junane Jacobs, were also inside the wendy house on August 11 last year. Abduragmaan and Jacobs were badly burnt and the incident adversely affected their lives and those of their families.
Van Zyl said that courts were inundated with similar cases and he had to protect the interests of women and children who were being abused.
“These crimes cannot be tolerated in society,” he said.
Abduragmaan testified last week that she had been in a relationship with Jacobs for seven years but ended it because he was abusing her.
She had moved in with Petersen, but on August 11 Jacobs arrived about 9am and said he wanted to speak to her. “I told him I wanted nothing to do with him,” Abduragmaan said.
Jacobs left and returned two hours later with a flammable substance.
The court took the three counts of attempted murder and one of arson together for sentencing, saying that direct imprisonment was the only suitable sentence.
Van Zyl found that Jacobs was not remorseful and was arrogant during the trial. He dismissed Jacobs’s version that he had nothing to do with the attack. Jacobs’s claim that the fire could have been caused by a candle or by Jacobs smoking dagga inside the wendy house was also rejected.
But Van Zyl took as a mitigating factor that Abduragmaan went to live with Jacobs after the incident. She told the court she forgave him and still loved him. But when he continued to abuse her, she left again, and is still living with Petersen.
Jacobs was declared unfit to possess a firearm.
jade.otto@inl.co.za
Cape Argus