A female nursery school teacher has been convicted of drowning her partner’s one-year-old daughter by sitting on her in the bath.
Amber Lee Hughes was found guilty of the crimes against Nada Jane Challita in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Thursday.
She was arrested after the four-year-old was found dead in the bathtub filled with water, inside the apartment Hughes shared with her dad, Elie Challita.
As the judge described the events that arose on that day, the day Nada-Jane was murdered, her dad’s face was visibly very distressed.
Throughout the trial, which started earlier this year, Hughes insisted more on how she was innocent and pleaded not guilty. It was not until last month that she confessed to drowning the girl after an argument arose with Challita over cheating, but she carried on to deny the allegations of r*pe.
Hughes and Challita had a turbulent relationship that featured several altercations, during which she kept on threatening to harm the child, as per the prosecution authority.
Judge Richard Mkhabela described to the court how Hughes premeditated the murder of this child.
‘The accused made the threat. She has the propensity to make violent threats. The objective evidence displayed that after stopping communication with Mr. Challita at 16:35, Mr Challita kept on sending the accused messages, but she didn’t reply; she had read those same texts.