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Lisa Mangena, Court Reporter
A BULAWAYO woman created a fictitious Facebook account to trace a maid who had fled after allegedly stealing a laptop, kitchenware and some clothes worth about $700 from her house.

A court yesterday heard how Ms Immaculate Gono (26) of Emganwini suburb created an account under the name Charles Todd and proposed love to the maid, Petronella Matsimbi (19), who is originally from Masvingo.

Matsimbi had stopped answering calls from her former employer.

Under cross-examination in court yesterday, Matsimbi claimed that she had not been paid and only took the property as compensation.

She said she would have returned the property after her employer paid her.

“I wanted her to suffer the way I had suffered when she did not pay me in due course,” said Matsimbi.

She pleaded guilty to theft before Western Commonage Magistrate Mr Lungile Ncube and was remanded to today.

The prosecutor, Mr Keneth Shava, told the court that on August 11, Ms Gono woke up to find her bedroom windows open and decided to check if all the windows were closed.

“She noticed her maid was not around and thought she had sneaked out to her boyfriend,” said Mr Shava.

“In the morning, she checked on her maid again and realised that all her clothes were not there and she tried contacting her”.

The court heard that Ms Gono later realised her kitchenware, a laptop and some clothes were missing.

On trying to contact her, Matsimbi would not answer her phone.

Ms Gono managed to locate Matsimbi through Facebook using a fake account and lured her to meet in the Bulawayo city centre.

“Ms Gono arranged with the police to meet Matsimbi in town on September 3 and they apprehended her,” said Mr Shava. — @LissahMangena