Victim of brutal assault lost her mom in a car crash this year

Less than five months before she was left bloody and bruised — a crude expletive carved into her forehead — Moesha Magotha suffered a devastating blow when her mother died in a horror car crash.

Now the 18-year-old from Port Elizabeth, who was in the car with her mother at the time of the accident, is fighting for her own life in Livingstone hospital.

She is in critical condition.

Just days before Magotha was horrifically stabbed and beaten she had received threatening messages from a man in Alexandria, the farming town near Port Alfred, her sister Gail said on Friday.

Gail said Magotha and the man had been in a relationship but Magotha had not known he was married and when she had queried his marital status — after being informed he had a wife — the man had said people were lying and he was single.

He continued to pursue Magotha who in May, following her mother's death, had moved back to Port Elizabeth from Alexandria where she had been living.

When Gail, 22, speaks of the attack on her younger sister she wavers between anger and sadness.

“He [the perpetrator] doesn't deserve to live,” Gail said on Friday, the same day 25-year-old suspect, Sean Nicolas Hendricks, appeared in the Alexandria magistrate's court.

Magotha, the third eldest of seven siblings,  was rescued last week Thursday when police were alerted to a disturbance in a house in Kwanonqubela Township in Alexandria.

In photographs, the pretty young woman's face is so badly injured she is unrecognisable.

Magotha's eyes are both bruised, her face swollen and she has blood below both eyes, on her forehead and above her lip.

Most shocking, however, is the four-letter swear word carved on her forehead.

Gail, who describes Magotha as a soft, intelligent person, says the family is still quite mystified about Magotha's movements leading up to the attack.

“We didn't know she had left Port Elizabeth to go to Alexandria until we got a message from him (the man who had been messaging Magotha) saying she was in Alexandria,” Gail said.

The sisters had moved to Alexandria with their mother in 2008 when their mother married a man living there.

They had, however, both lived with their aunt in Port Elizabeth while they finished high school at Arcadia High.

Once finished school they had again lived in Alexandria returning to their aunt following their mother's death.

Police spokesperson Captain Mali Govender confirmed that Hendricks appeared in court on Friday and had been denied bail.

He is facing attempted murder charges.

“The suspect was arrested following a report of a suspicious noise from a member of the public, coming from a house in the Kwanonqubela Township in Alexandria.

“On arrival at the scene, the suspect was in the company of a severely beaten female. The 18-year-old victim was taken to a local hospital and later transferred to a hospital in Port Elizabeth. She is in critical condition,” Govender said.

Xolisa Runeli, the EFF's PR councillor in the Ndlambe municipality, led a group of about 300 people who protested outside the Alexandria magistrate's court on Friday.

“His intention was to kill her. He went as far as branding her. He saw her as if she had no value. Who could live with the word p**s carved in her head?” Runeli said.

“He was denied bail but will be back on October 27,” Runeli said.