Cape Town – A father of two small children, convicted of armed robbery, jumped the prisoner’s dock of a court in Cape Town on Monday, and escaped, seconds after he had been sentenced to four years in prison.
The escape happened so fast, that he was gone in a flash, before anyone realised what in fact had happened. By late on Monday he was still on the run.
Aldrin (Ollie) Witbooi, 37, appeared in the Parow Regional Court, before magistrate Constance Nziweni. The magistrate had sentenced him to six years, and as she suspended two of the six years – effectively jailing him for four years – there was a commotion as he suddenly jumped backwards out of the dock.
In a flash, he was out of the door, and gone, before anyone could stop him.
The case was a sequel to an incident one night in October, 2015, when Witbooi, accompanied his cousin Annette Andrews, 28, paid a late-night visit to the Goodwood home of Dutch immigrant Aarnold de Myunk.
De Myunk had invited Andrews to his home that night for supper, and she had arrived with Witbooi. As De Myunk opened the gate for the two, a second, unknown man, armed with a hand gun, suddenly appeared from nowhere and pushed his way past them.
This second, unnamed man proceeded to ransack the house and help himself to De Myunk’s expense music recording equipment. The man with the hand gun got away, leaving Witbooi and his cousin to face the music.
As it turned out, Andrews was acquitted, leaving Witbooi to take the rap. Minutes prior to the brazen escape in the late morning, the court had rejected defence lawyer Andre Parries’s request for a suspended prison sentence.
The magistrate said Witbooi had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, and had compelled prosecutor Barry van der Berg to call De Myunk to the witness stand.
She said Witbooi had forced the victim to attend the proceedings, and had made him relive the trauma of that night.
The incident had left De Myunk fedup with the rampant crime in South Africa, and had forced him to return to the Netherlands. She added: “Because of your action, the victim no longer feels safe in South Africa, and he has left our shores with a bad perception of our country. “People like you give the country a bad name.”
The magistrate said portion of the prison sentence was conditionally suspended, to hang over Witbooi's head like a sword, and to make him think twice before repeating the offence.