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- Four of the seven people accused of a string of murders in Hanover Park, Cape Town, were found guilty at the Pollsmoor Circuit Court on Tuesday.
- Three were acquitted, including a 68-year-old man who was arrested when police found guns in a pot in his kitchen.
- The judge said in one of the crimes the accused snatched bloodied jewellery from a victim they had just killed.
Four of the seven people accused of being involved in gang murders and attempted murders in Hanover Park, Cape Town, were found guilty at the Pollsmoor Circuit Court on Tuesday.
The two men and a woman who were acquitted looked relieved after the lengthy trial held at the prison, and a judgment that took days to read to the court.
Accused number 7, 68-year-old Moegamat Kamish, took off his glasses, cupped his hands over his face and sobbed when he heard that he was not going to jail after police found three guns in a soup pot in his kitchen.
He was arrested along with accused number 5, Moenzier January, for unlawful possession of a 7.65 caliber Pietro Beretta semi-automatic firearm, a Llama Gabilondo and a 9mm Parabellum Norinco model 213, and ammunition.
The guns were found during a police search at Kamish's house on 13 April 2019, a day after the callous murders of two men and a woman in a VW Golf in Hanover Park.
He insisted that he was sleeping at the time the police said the guns were dropped off for hiding and the court accepted his explanation.
However, acting Judge Raadiyah Wathen-Falken found January guilty on firearms charges for stashing the guns.
January testified that he hid the guns in Kamish's kitchen in exchange for a hit of heroin that accused number three, Mikyle Abdullah, said he would get for the favour.
He took the guns, which were swaddled in a blue Pick n Pay plastic bag, stuffed them into the pot, then went into his bedroom with Abdullah to smoke some "buttons" – street talk for mandrax.
However, January's girlfriend was visiting when Abdullah arrived. So, before he let Abdullah in, he asked his girlfriend to hide in his bedroom cupboard, which she did while the two men sat and smoked buttons together after the guns were hidden.
January said he had been an addict for years and used drugs every day, and that he did it for the free heroin.
The night before, on 12 April 2019, Bradwin Duminy, Sidney Moloy and Roeshaana Kader were shot dead in a red VW Golf while they were visiting a friend in Hanover Park.
A witness testified that Mikyle Davids, his brother – accused number 2, Tyrone Davids – and accused number 4, Shamieg Mathieson walked up to the car and asked in gang language whether the three had any guns on them.
Duminy popped open a cubby hole and showed a toy gun that looked real. Then the Davids brothers pulled their shirts up to reveal their guns wedged into their waistbands.
Tyrone also leaned into the window and touched Duminy's neck and admired his necklaces, which were worth between R2 800 and R3 000.
Moloy wore some jewellery belonging to the witness, who had asked him to wear it to keep it safe because she had heard that someone was planning to rob her.
The three had asked the witness for a lift, but she refused. She went into her friend's house and fell asleep while Duminy, Moloy and Kader stayed in her car smoking buttons.
When she woke up on 13 April, she was told the three were found shot dead in her car at a place called Die Hel in Hanover Park.
Wathen-Falken said one of the accused was later heard boasting that one of the victims' "eyes popped out" when he shot him in the head.
Said Wathen-Falken: "Essentially, these are very serious offences committed and it is reduced to something that is almost laughable.
"A joke was made of something quite serious."
But, the horror was not over yet in terms of evidence.
Wathen-Falken said the car was covered in blood and tissue from shooting at such close quarters, so afterwards, the three men went to a house in Hanover Park to change their clothes. They put their blood-soaked clothes into a plastic bag and asked a drug dealer who lived on the property to get rid of them. However, the clothes were so bloody that the dealer asked one of them what had happened.
"He told witness A it was tomato sauce which was given in excess when they ate a Gatsby," said Wathen-Falken.
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The judge said the accused showed "absolutely no regard for human lives" and added that Tyrone had gone a step further by reaching into the bloodied car to grab the jewellery of the dead.
"Later, on 13 April, he took that bloodied jewellery and sold it to a person at the Cape Town Station. That is certainly not the conduct of any type of person who would have any kind of empathy or any kind of remorse."
No one was convicted for the murder of Gertrude Jantjies on 1 April 2019, which they were accused of, because the only witness prepared to testify was high on mandrax at the time that she saw Jantjies being murdered.
That meant Malieka Meyer was also acquitted because she was charged in connection with that crime.
Mikyle was also found guilty of the murder of Moegamat Hendricks on 6 August 2017 and the murder of Abdul Sataar Joseph on 30 March 2019, both in Hanover Park, as well as the attempted murders of three people, including a baby, who were not named for their safety.
Sentencing procedures started on Wednesday.
