By Michael Kaluba
The family of late Monica Chabwera Phiri who was murdered in 2007 has expressed shock over the decision by the Zambia Correctional Service to free her murderer, Beatrice Hangwende, who killed her.
The Parole Board of the Zambia Correctional Service has freed murder convict Beatrice Hangwende who killed the husband’s lover, Monica Chabwera in 2007, sighting good behavior as the reason for parole.
But late Monica’s sister, Mercy Phiri has told Phoenix News that the family is disheartened by the authority’s decision and has since demanded for an explanation as to why Beatrice Hagweende’s life imprisonment sentence has been cut short.
Ms. Phiri says the family will not accept the release of her sister’s murderer saying the move is an injustice to her late sister whose life will never be brought back.
PHOENIX NEWS
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#Flashback Beatrice Hangwende Murders Monica Chabwera Phiri
22nd April, 2007
MONICA Chabwera Phiri was killed on 22nd April, 2007. The sequence of events culminating in the murder and the attempted murder of her driver Benny Banda were so strange and dramatic that they could be scripted into a movie. The events paint a sordid picture of uncontained emotions and blatant disregard for human life. They unfolded like a melodrama of a fusion and explosion of love and hatred; a tale of naivety, deception, sweet talk and betrayal, but also as a story of phenomenal advances in communication technology and its impact on crime investigation in Zambia.
Monica Chabwera Phiri, a business woman suspected to have been in an illicit affair with Beatrice Hangwende’s husband, was, together with her driver, Ben Banda, abducted in tragicomic circumstances on 22nd April, 2007 around 18:30 hours. The setting: Flat NO.1,Weevel Court, Rhodes Park, Lusaka, the residence of the Beatrice Hangwende estranged husband.
Together with her driver, the deceased was bundled into her own Mercedez Benz saloon car, by three male adults and driven away to her death. They were trailed by an unregistered backup car driven by a male adult and carrying at least two female adults, as they were conveyed through the Great East Road and off it to some inconspicuous point in the Chisamba area. There, the deceased was shot three times in cold blood by one of the abductors on the orders of one of the women from the trailing backup car. The deceased’s lifeless body was left lying in a pool of blood in the bush, and her Mercedez Benz car was abandoned some twenty-one kilometers away from the scene, near a farm in Chisamba. An attempt to shoot Benny Banda was miraculously unsuccessful as he bravely wrestled and fought his way out of the assailants’ grip, amid a blazing gun, and ran away from the assailants into the bush, climbing in the process, a tree for safety.