Durban - The family of murdered Durban man Craigh Botha, who died after being shot in a nightclub brawl, sat in the front row of the Durban Regional Court on Wednesday anxious to find out what had led to his death.
Bouncer and mixed martial arts fighter Hector Britts pleaded not guilty to murder when his trial began before magistrate Fariedha Mohamed on Wednesday.
Earlier, outside the court building, Britts threatened to break a photographer’s camera if he did not delete all pictures that had been taken of him. The photographer, working for Independent Media, deleted the pictures, but they were later retrieved.
Britts handed himself over to police days after the August 3, 2013 shooting at the Rocca Bar nightclub. He was charged with attempted murder after Botha was shot in the stomach, but the charge was upgraded to murder when Botha died.
During his bail application, Britts said in an affidavit that he had been working as the club’s security manager and that Botha had attacked and punched him.
He said he had been dazed by the assault and then another person, who he could not identify, shot Botha. He also said he did not own a gun.
On Wednesday, witness Joann du Preez testified that she was at the nightclub on the night of the shooting. Du Preez said she had been standing on a balcony inside the nightclub when she heard a gunshot. She said that a few minutes later, she saw a “well-built man” slide a black firearm into his black shirt and disappear into the crowd. She could not say whether the man was Britts. Under cross-examination by Britts’s attorney, Ridewaan Sayed, Du Preez conceded that the black object had appeared to her to be a firearm.
She also claimed that she had only found out that someone had been shot from a Facebook post days later.
Du Preez later recanted this evidence after it was pointed out that in her police statement she said she found out that someone was shot on the same night of the shooting.
Sayed asked Du Preez if she saw an assault that took place before the shooting, but she said she had not. She also admitted that she had not gone to police to report what she’d seen and had been traced by the investigating officer after making a comment on Facebook.
Sayed applied for the case to be postponed because a crucial witness statement had only been handed to him on Wednesday.
State prosecutor Calvin Govender opposed this, but magistrate Mohamed adjourned the case to February next year.
The Mercury