Durban - The defence in the Biance Parsons murder trial was on Thursday expected to start calling witnesses to the stand.
This, after the State has wrapped up its case in the Durban High Court against Darryl Murrison, 33, and Christopher Houston, 26, who are charged with murder and attempted murder.
The two are charged with the murder last year of Bluff mother Bianca Parsons in Wentworth.
Video footage of the incident, which took place at a garage, was shown in court yesterday as the investigating officer, Captain Erugubathie Naidoo, showed the two men had acted together.
In the footage, Houston is seen alighting from a VW Polo and grabbing a shiny object from the car floor and putting it at the back of his trousers.
Naidoo pointed out the visible bulge in footage from inside the shop. The men leave the shop and Murrison walks towards the diesel bowser, where Parson’s vehicle was parked and where she was shot.
Naidoo explained that the Polo the men arrived in then started pulling out of the garage and on to Tara Road, before the video footage shows it slowing down so Murrison could jump in.
Naidoo told the court that the men had opted to remain silent since their arrests and had hired a lawyer.
Police efforts to locate the murder weapon had been unsuccessful.
“Accused one did mention in court in his statement that he threw the gun into a canal,” Naidoo said.
The men are both in custody after Houston was denied bail by the Durban Regional Court last May, while Murrison chose to abandon his bail application and confessed to shooting Parsons.
He claimed that he was supposed to shoot a man who was in a car the same colour as Parsons’, parked at the service station at the time.
It is alleged that the hit was meant to be on a member of another family member who was in a red Chery QQ3, and related to the shooting of Houston’s relative who was killed outside a nightclub in Wentworth last year.
Earlier this week in his plea, Murrison said Houston had played no part in the murder. However, the State rejected his guilty plea, saying the two had acted together and his plea was subsequently changed to not guilty.