Olwethu Xabanisa (Algoa FM News)
A Mozambican national has been jailed for 22 years for the murder of retired Eastern Cape police officer, Brigadier Joseph Jongile.
Twenty-one-year-old German Billa was sentenced in the East London High Court on Thursday after pleading guilty this week to charges of murder and robbery.
He was arrested in Mpumalanga in July last year after Brigadier Jongile was gunned down in his Baysville home on the 14th of May.
It was almost a year ago when Billa and his accomplices entered the property through the backyard where they went to the basement and found his son.
Hawks spokesperson Captain Yolisa Mgolodela said they forced the son at gunpoint to knock on the door of the main house where they were met by Jongile's wife, who screamed, alerting her husband who was upstairs.
Mgolodela said when he came down from the top floor, he was fatally wounded by one of the men.
Jongile's distraught wife and her son were tied up in separate rooms before the men ransacked the house taking cell phones, laptops, bicycles, bank cards and a firearm.
Billa's accomplices are still at large.
