Cape Town - The much-anticipated video footage evidence from the crime scene capturing the brutal killing of criminal lawyer Pete Mihalik was on Thursday played in the Western Cape High Court where the three men accused of his murder are on trial.
Sizwe Biyela, Vuyile Maliti and Nkosinathi Khumalo are charged with the murder of Mihalik, who was shot and killed while dropping off his two children at Reddam House School on October 30, 2018.
As explained by video technician Werner Höll while being questioned by advocate Greg Wolmarans, the video footage was retrieved from the BIG Backpackers surveillance system in Green Point two hours after the shooting took place.
As the footage was played, Höll, with the assistance of Wolmarans, explained what happened in the video displayed on a TV monitor inside court. Höll said around 7.22am on the day of the murder, the video showed a man wearing a “reddish check shirt, beige pants and black shoes” walking on Thornhill Road towards the Cavalcade Road intersection.
“He appeared to be carrying a small bag or satchel in his left hand, black in colour,” Höll explained.
He went on to say that at 7.26am, Mihalik’s black Mercedez SUV comes into the frame of the video, driving behind a silver grey VW Polo on Thornhill Road. The video depicts
Mihalik coming to a stop at the intersection, where someone gets out of the left back door.
What happens next left the court in silence. Very quickly the man in the beige pants, who had been waiting at the opposite side of the road comes into frame and points what Höll described as “what looks like a firearm”, at the right side of Mihalik’s SUV.
Seconds pass before the man lowers his hand and moves back down Thornhill, placing the object back in the bag.
All of this happens while the person who got out of the SUV is at the left side of the vehicle. One can see from the footage that in seconds there are people surrounding the vehicle as they come to the victim’s aid.
Still images from the video have been handed in as evidence for the court. According to the State, two shots were fired at Mihalik’s car before his killer fled the scene. The State alleges that Biyela was the shooter on the day of the incident.
