By: Lloyd M’bwana
Somber mood has engulfed Zingwangwa Township residents in the commercial city of Blantyre following a 52 year-old man who shot dead his wife and step-son before killing himself on suspicion that the wife was going out with other men.
Blantyre Police Station’s Spokesperson, Elizabeth Divala has confirmed the death of the man identified as Charles Chipanda, the wife Grace 44 and son Gift 14 saying a pistol and nine live ammunitions were found on the scene of the incident.
The Police Publicist Divala further disclosed that they also found a confession letter which both the wife and husband co-signed and currently the bodies of the three are at Elizabeth Central Hospital for postmortem.
“In that letter, the wife was confessing that she was going out with other men while the husband was seeking for forgiveness from relatives for killing the wife and the child due to the wife’s behavior”, discloses Divala.
But neighbours of the deceased couple talked on the scene revealed that the family started quarreling at around 19:00 hours on Sunday and disagreement went into the middle night which even neighbours went to the house for mediation of the two but the man told them that the matter of none of their business and they went back to their respective houses.
“Before we were sent back to our houses, the man was accusing the wife of infidelity that the child was used as shield in the process of cheating. It seems the man was beating the two simultaneously before killing them. As in the morning on Monday, January 11, we were
surprised to see no-one came out from the house.
“After sometime we noticed the couple’s relatives’ arrival at the house and started peeping through the window. That’s when one relative detected that something was amiss and alerted the police. When the police came, they forced the door open as there were chairs piled on it and that’s when the discovered the dead bodies. But honestly, we didn’t hear any gunshot on that night”, elaborates the neighbour.
Chipanda was a businessperson owning a sachet liquor shop in Zingwangwa Township Market and hailed from Traditional Authority (T.A) Chowe in the lakeshore district of Mangochi.
Meanwhile, Minister of Gender Patricia Kaliati has expressed sadness over the incident and questioned the wisdom behind the man decision to wipe up his own family in brutal manner including an innocent child who was supposed to be protected from any form of abuses urging couples across the nation to iron out their differences unlike resorting for suicide.
