Philip April.
PHOTO: Jenni Evans/Noticias24
- An aspiring Clanwilliam teacher will begin a life sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend.
- He also received five years for stealing his car after the murder.
- The judge considered that he had given a “diluted version” of what happened during the attack.
The public gallery cheered when Judge Nonthutuzela Ralarala sent Philip April to life jail for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, schoolteacher, Allison Plaatjies.
Just 27 years old, April winced at the findings before sentencing, then quickly turned and walked back down the steps back to the holding cells of the Western Cape High Court when she heard her fate.
Plaatjies was found with her head nearly decapitated and severe bite marks on her face on 26 October 2019 at her apartment in Katjiepiering Street, Clanwilliam.
April was arrested with a ruse to get him back from a drinking binge with his friends in Plaatjies’ Hyundai, which he stole after changing out of his bloody pants and going on with his life as if nothing had happened.
He finally confessed. In court, he pleaded guilty to murder, but said it was not premeditated.
She pleaded not guilty to the theft of the car she was so proud of. She said they had both used the vehicle, so it couldn’t have been a theft.
He explained that the murder occurred after he failed an exam, in which he would have qualified as a teacher. He desperately wanted to see her after that, but she turned him down.
Allison Plaatjies and Philip April.
FacebookFacebook, Allison Plaatjies
One of her friends testified that, at that time, Plaatjies considered their relationship to be over and could not accept it.
That morning, he went to get the key to her apartment while she was helping in a school workshop and said he wanted to do her laundry. Later, she found the key for him while he watched rugby and drank with friends.
They went back to their flat to eat something. padkos she had saved him from the school show.
READ | Cape Town teenager shot 17 times just hours before his matric results were released
But they began to argue about his drinking and that he was not included in their plans for that night. He was also upset that she had taken him away from her friends and now she wanted to go out without him.
He stabbed her so violently that she broke the knife. He got another knife and continued to plunge it into her body as she fended off her. He bit her face so violently that she showed him her gums.
That afternoon, there was a frantic search for Plaatjies because she had failed to appear to judge a modeling contest and, to her mother’s horror, she was found dead.
Alison Plaatjies’ mother, Yvonne Plaatjies, and her cousin, Lizel.
Jaco Marais
The spokesman for the National Prosecutor’s Office, Eric Ntabazalila, said after the sentencing on Tuesday that the prosecutor, Rene Uys, had rejected his guilty plea because he was certain that he had not told the truth about the violence of the attack when he offered his explanation of culpability.
For Uys, it was not a momentary lapse of reason. His intentions were clear: it was a premeditated murder.
READ | Meghan Cremer murder: ‘The truth came out’ – Jeremy Sias says after acquittal
Ralarala agreed with Uys, saying that April had come up with a “watered down version” of the attack.
The judge explained that he had to balance everything he heard about his life: how he was very upset when his parents divorced and then he turned to drinking to numb the depression.
Still, he couldn’t reconcile that with the sheer cruelty of the attack on Plaatjies.
Plaatjies had trusted him with her life and he had betrayed her trust, she said. Even her family had trusted him, and he too had dragged her unsuspecting friends into the mess by giving them a lift in her car as she lay dead in a pool of blood.
Ralarala told him how he had devastated Plaatjies’ mother, Yvonne, sitting to one side of the courtroom, who had fallen ill since her daughter’s murder.
“A clear message must be sent to criminals who commit gender violence,” he said sternly.
