Cape Town - After vehemently denying the allegations for more than a year, a 21-year-old Macassar man had a sudden change of heart on Monday and apologised in open court for stabbing Hawks police officer Petrus Holtz to death last year.
However, it was already too late because, by then, Western Cape High Court Judge Robert Henney had already convicted Adrian Hendricks of the murder, as well as two counts of malicious damage to property, one of aggravated robbery and a fifth of aggravated attempted robbery.
The convictions relate to the attack on Holtz as well as a previous incident nearly two weeks before in which his victim, Jacques Loots, was stabbed. Loots survived the attack.
Two women, Marion du Toit and Jeanne Antonia de Kock , were with Loots at the time.
Judge Henney did not find that Holtz’s murder was premeditated, but rather found that Hendricks must have foreseen that Holz would die when he stabbed him and left him for dead along the side of the road.
After a short adjournment, Hendricks’s advocate, Sheriff Mohamed, presented his argument in mitigation of sentence and submitted that his client was young and that he was a good candidate for rehabilitation.
But Judge Henney responded that Mohamed could not even address the issue of rehabilitation if his client did not accept responsibility for his conduct.
“He tried to mislead the court. He did not take the court into his confidence. He came here and told lies,” Judge Henney said.
This prompted the accused to make the spur-of-the-moment decision to testify.
Hendricks barely made eye contact with anyone in court - not even his own advocate - and appeared awkward and almost angry as he mumbled the apology off on Monday.
“I am sorry that I stabbed him to death. It was not my intention to kill him. I just wanted to scare him,” he said.
He admitted that he had lied to the court when he denied involvement in Holtz’s death but said that he was only sparing with the truth because he thought he would get away with it.
Hendricks said he had learnt from his friends about the practice of putting bricks in the path of oncoming traffic to force them to come to a standstill.
He agreed to give police the details of the culprits involved.
He blamed his friends for putting the bricks on the highway which Holtz’s car hit, saying that he merely pounced opportunistically when Holtz got out of the vehicle.
Hendricks also denied that he had anything to do with the incident in which Loots had been stabbed.
The two incidents took place 12 days apart in July last year on a stretch of the N2 which has been dubbed the “hell run” because of the number of incidents that occur there.
According to police detective Norman Ngonelo, who also testified on Monday, the piece of road stretches from Somerset West to the airport. On some parts of the road there have been stonings.
Ngonelo said there were billboards along the side of the highway which warn people not to stop because it is a high crime area.