Bulawayo mbinga who shot dead 4th year MSU student last week has joined his ancestors at lodge

Godknows Muleya, the man sought by police after the fatal shooting of Midlands State University student Lisedi Nkomo, was reported dead in Chiredzi on Sunday, three days after the 25-year-old was killed at a boarding house in Gweru.

Veteran journalist Ezra Tshisa Sibanda reported on Sunday that Muleya had shot himself in Chiredzi. The report did not specify the exact location. Police had not issued a public statement confirming Muleya’s death by Sunday morning.

Nkomo was shot at about 5.30pm on Thursday, 8 October, at a student residence in Senga KMP. She was in her fourth year studying Psychology at Midlands State University and was the mother of an infant son. She was 25.

Police named Muleya as Nkomo’s former husband and said they were investigating her death. Their initial account said the pair had a dispute before Nkomo was shot once in the forehead. Police said Muleya then fled after taking the phones of other tenants and locking them inside a room.

The shooting unfolded while the caretaker, Blessing Nkomo, was away in town to collect a mattress. She said a child staying at the property telephoned to check whether she was safe and at home. Blessing told the child she was away and asked her to look around the rooms.

The child found doors open and a man in a hooded jacket moving around the property, according to Blessing. When students went into the passage to find out what was happening, the man threatened them and ordered them inside.

“He took their phones and ordered them to get inside. Four of the students were forced into one room, the same room where my tenant was shot. He locked them inside and threw their phones into a bathtub,” Blessing said.

The students were trapped in the room with Nkomo’s body. Blessing and her husband abandoned their errand and sought help. They first approached police, then made contact with a Criminal Investigations Department team travelling towards Shurugwi after officers at a roadblock linked them to the detectives.

Blessing returned to the property with two officers. The four students were still locked inside and calling for help. The keys were also inside, so police asked her to find a crowbar to force the door open.

“My girls were crying and shouting, ‘Auntie, things are not good here! Open for us!’ They then told me that one of them was dead,” she said.

The students were eventually freed. Nkomo had died in her room. Police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi said a cartridge, a broken Itel phone and a Samsung Galaxy A05s were recovered at the scene. He said the body was found face upwards in a pool of blood.

“The suspect then shot the now deceased once on the forehead using an unknown pistol,” Nyathi said.

Blessing said she had seen a visitor at the property earlier that afternoon. The man was dressed in blue, and a grey or dark-silver vehicle was parked nearby. She greeted him but assumed he was a relative visiting one of the students. She did not record the vehicle’s registration number.

Students later told Blessing that the visitor had been to the property about two weeks earlier and was trying to reconcile with Nkomo. A friend of Nkomo’s also recognised him as someone who had previously lived in the area and had asked her to resume their relationship.

The couple’s relationship was also described in a lengthy Facebook message posted on an account bearing Muleya’s name after the shooting. In the message, he recalled difficulties between the pair and tension involving their families. He said he had been married to another woman, identified as Kimberly, when his relationship with Nkomo began, and wrote that he later ended that marriage after Nkomo asked him to do so.

“When Lesedi fell pregnant, I knew my responsibilities had grown, and I wanted to stand by her and our child,” the post said.

Muleya wrote about the birth of their son, saying he had been beside Nkomo during the delivery. He also described periods of separation and reconciliation, and referred to accusations, misunderstandings and emotional struggles between them.

“I am not writing this message to portray myself as a saint or Lesedi as a bad person. I have made mistakes, and I take responsibility for my part in everything that happened. There are things I regret, and I know that I may have hurt her in ways I did not fully understand at the time,” the post said.

The message ended with an appeal for forgiveness from both families and a statement of grief. “I loved. I tried. I made mistakes. I am grieving. But above all, I am human, and I am trusting God to give me strength through this pain,” it said.

Nkomo’s infant son, estimated to be eight or nine months old, is staying with his paternal grandmother, according to Blessing. The report of Muleya’s death has left the child’s relatives confronting the prospect that the boy may have lost both parents within days.

The four students who were locked in the room were also left to deal with the aftermath of the shooting. Gender activist Locadia Mavhudzi called for support for them and for the families affected. “No relationship is worth a human life. Love does not justify control, threats, intimidation or violence,” she said.

Mavhudzi said intimate-partner violence should not be dismissed as a private matter. She called for counselling and safe spaces for the students, who had been trapped with their friend’s body until the door was forced open.

The case follows another fatal shooting involving a couple in Harare in August. Police said Sergeant Portia Dzanwa, 36, was shot dead in Hopley by her husband, Pharaoh Dombodzvuku, 52. Police said Dombodzvuku then shot himself with the same pistol and was taken to hospital in critical condition under police guard.

In Gweru, the immediate chronology is clear: Nkomo was shot on Thursday afternoon, the caretaker and police freed the four students, and a public apology appeared on an account bearing Muleya’s name before reports of his death emerged on Sunday. The shooting has left Nkomo’s family mourning, an infant without either parent and four fellow students who witnessed the consequences of the violence at their home.