Cape Town - Court 4 at the Western Cape High Court was packed with the family and friends of 16-year-old Michaela Adriaanse on Monday as judgement was expected to be delivered in the case against her alleged killer.
Wearing pink T-shirts adorned with photographs of the pretty teenager, and bearing the words, “Justice for Michaela”, they had travelled from Hanover Park to witness the final days of the trial against Bradley Noble.
Acting Judge Yolanda Renqe began delivering her lengthy judgement on Monday, but was expected to take two days.
Summarising the State’s case, the acting judge detailed the day the teenager went missing on March 19, 2015.
Together with several school friends, she had gone to Wynberg public pool, but they were refused entry as it was a school day. Instead, they headed off to Kalk Bay beach where they smoked marijuana and drank whiskey.
There, they met Bradley Noble, who introduced himself as a drug merchant from Retreat.
Later in the day, Michaela had a fight with a school friend over a pair of sunglasses and stormed off to join a group of men from Manenberg. But she then returned to her friends, and got her bag to leave.
During the trial, her friends testified that Noble had said he would bring Michaela back and that he followed her, and that was the last time they saw her.
The teenager’s friends spent the next few hours searching for her. They enlisted the help of a “Trevor” and “Garth” who had also been at the beach earlier that day and could provide them with a cellphone number for Noble. At about 8pm that night they caught the last train home. They went to Michaela’s Hanover Park home and told her parents the teen was missing.
The family reported the case to Muizenberg police station and that night they went to Noble’s home, but he was not there. They returned with police for a second time after midnight and this time found him sleeping. He denied being at the beach, until he saw one of the schoolgirls he had been with that day. He also denied knowing where Michaela was, and even helped police in the search for her.
Three days later, on Sunday March 22, her body was found in a bushy area in Kalk Bay. The state alleges that Noble raped her before killing her by hitting her on the head with a rock.
DNA results matched the DNA samples of the accused.
The judgement will continue on Tuesday.
African News Agency