Cape Town – The family of murdered 20-year-old Franco D’este said that while they will have an empty seat at their Christmas table, their son’s alleged murderer has the privilege of being with his family while out on R2 000 bail.
The case, heard in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Friday, was postponed to March next year.
D’este was shot and killed outside a nightclub in Loop Street on September 7 allegedly by 22-year-old Ethan Fisher who claimed that he killed D’este in self-defence.
In a heartfelt letter, Franco’s father, Matthys du Toit, said the family were a “broken household in tears”.
“It has almost been three months since Franco was shot and we still struggle every day to cope with the loss and to make sense of what happened.
"He was going out with friends to a club and ended up being shot and died in hospital a few hours later without us being able to say goodbye to him,” Du Toit said.
He added that they were grappling with the processes of the justice system that were “more concerned about the rights of the guy doing the shooting than about the trauma of the family”.
“The shooter was released on R2 000 bail in September with a court date set for November 29. (Come) November 29, the court spent all of five minutes to postpone the case to March 3, 2020.
"The guy who shot and killed our son is having Christmas with his family, while our son is dead and our family is being torn apart by grief.”
Fisher had handed himself and his gun over to police at the Cape Town police station.
“Not once did he or his parents try to contact us to tell us they are sorry for what they did to us, for killing our only son, for cutting his life short and taking him away from his sister and from us forever.
"During the two times we saw him at court, he had not shown a second of remorse. Instead he seems smug and unconcerned about the pain he has inflicted on our lives.
“But, we beg, please deal with this so that the person responsible for this pays the price for what he did, instead of giving him a Christmas with his family just because he can afford expensive lawyers,” Du Toit said.
Friends and family have started an online petition calling for justice for D’este, which can be found at http://chng.it/HCDSPQyQtB