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Marna Engelbrecht, 17, and Sharnelle Hough, 16. (Photo: Included)
- Xander Bylsma intends to appeal his sentence for the Stella murders for which he was convicted.
- He was found guilty of the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her friend.
- Sharnell Hough was found hanged and Marna Engelbrecht was strangled in a Northwest school.
The tragedy of the Stella Shelter murders will be reviewed on Friday when Xander Bylsma tries to appeal his sentence in the double murder case.
He was sentenced to two life sentences for the deaths of his ex-girlfriend Sharnell Hough, 17, and her friend and cousin Marna Engelbrecht.
He was 19 years old at the time of the murders and, according to the court, showed behavior problems at school and was eventually expelled from the school shelter.
Hough was found hanged on a staircase, and Engelbrecht was found strangled in a bathroom at Huis Esterhuizen at Hoerskool Stella High School in North West on May 26, 2018.
READ | ‘I’m not ashamed of my son’ – mother of Stella Xander Bylsma’s killer
On August 7, Mmabatho Superior Court Judge Ronald Hendricks sentenced Bylsma to life in prison on two counts of murder for their deaths.
Hendricks called Bylsma a “self-centered” person who did not think about the results of what he did and could not admit his wrongdoings.
She found out that Bylsma had tried to make Hough’s murder look like suicide and murdered Engelbrecht because she knew that she would not approve of her friend rekindling a relationship with Bylsma.
He had also insulted the girls in crude terms before his murder.
The spokesman for the Northwest National Tax Authority said it would appeal the sentence and that the state would oppose the request.
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