BULAWAYO-(MaraviPost)-He said he was never anywhere near the crime scene, but his phone and face betrayed him beyond reasonable doubt.
Trust Nkomo, 43, of Pumula South, was jailed for five years this week for a 3am home invasion in which his gang used a four-year-old boy and a three-month-old baby as bargaining chips.
Bulawayo Provincial Magistrate Themba Chimiso convicted him of armed robbery. One year of the sentence was suspended on condition he repays US$2,683 – the value of what was stolen on 31 March 2026. Two accomplices are still being hunted.
According to B-Metro, which first reported the case, the prosecution’s story was simple but brutal.
Godknows Muleya’s house was locked for the night. Inside were his partner Kimberly Shambare, two small children, and a housemaid sleeping in the lounge.
Around 3am, three men armed with an axe and a Taser forced their way in and went straight to the main bedroom.
Shambare told the court she woke to a man standing over her with an axe ordering silence. She screamed. He then grabbed her four-year-old son by the legs and laid the blade across the boy’s neck, demanding cash, gold and valuables.
When that did not produce much, the gang forced her off the bed, struck her knee with the back of the axe, and tossed the room. Under the mattress they found what they had not brought – Muleya’s licensed Derya pistol.
That changed the threat level.
The court heard that Nkomo picked up the pistol and turned it on the youngest victim – the three-month-old baby – while demanding money. Shambare said she told them she only had US$15 in her bag. They took it, plus phones from the bedroom, then moved to the sitting room, woke the maid, took her phone, and carried out a TV, gas cylinder and flash drives.
Nkomo’s defence was an alibi. It collapsed on three fronts.
One, the parade. Two witnesses picked him out. Shambare was specific – a distinctive gun-shaped mark on his face. Chimiso said in his ruling that the court had itself observed that mark.
Two, the phone. Detectives took Nkomo’s handset for triangulation. The data placed him at the crime scene at the time of the attack, directly contradicting his claim that he was elsewhere.
Three, the magazine. Police later recovered a pistol magazine with 15 live rounds from Nkomo. Muleya testified he had engraved three tiny dots on the plastic base plate when he bought the pistol. He identified the recovered magazine by those dots.
Prosecutor Samuel Mpofu argued the cruelty was the aggravating factor – an axe to a child’s neck, a gun to a baby’s head, and a mother left traumatised. Shambare said in her victim impact statement she still struggles to sleep in that bedroom and her children wake up screaming.
Chimiso said a fine or community service would trivialise the offence.
“Two witnesses identified you at an identification parade,” he told Nkomo. “Your phone showed you were at the scene. You were found with a gun you stole from the house.”
Nkomo will serve an effective four years. The fifth year hangs on restitution.
Police say the hunt continues for the other two men who vanished with the rest of the loot.
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