Durban - The defence has slammed a teenager’s testimony during the murder trial of a Phoenix man accused of killing 9-year-old Miguel Louw, as a lie, saying the youngster did not see a man at the school gate looking for Miguel.
The 14-year-old boy, who cannot be named, on Wednesday pointed out murder accused Mohamed Vahed Ebrahim in the Durban High Court as the man who came looking for Miguel.
He had earlier testified that the day Miguel went missing, a man he thought was Miguel’s father was at the school gate at 2.30pm looking for Miguel, and had offered one of the teen’s two friends who were with him R10 if he went inside the school to look for Miguel.
However, the defence on Wednesday argued that the boy’s evidence contradicted the evidence of the CCTV footage taken from the KFC in Sydenham, near Miguel’s school, which showed Miguel and Ebrahim at the KFC at 2.04pm.
It is common cause that Ebrahim was at the KFC on the afternoon that Miguel went missing, but the dispute between the State and the defence is what happened after they both left the KFC. The State alleges that Ebrahim boarded a taxi.
Miguel’s decomposed body was found in Phoenix, 10 days after he disappeared.
Under cross-examination by advocate Jay Naidoo, Naidoo argued that the boy’s testimony about the school gate and the money was told to him by Miguel’s mother, the police or the State, before he came to court to testify.
Naidoo questioned the boy at length on why he had not told the police about the two friends he claimed were with him when the man was at the school gate.
Naidoo said none of this was mentioned in the statement and it was only revealed when the boy testified on Tuesday .
“All the evidence you have given is all wrong. It’s either a lie or something that was told to you. The video clearly shows the time that Ebrahim and Miguel were at the KFC, four minutes after school was out,” said Naidoo.
Admitting that he did speak to Miguel’s parents on the afternoon of Miguel’s disappearance, and again when Miguel’s mother came to the school the next day and asked him to confirm if the man he had seen at the school gate was the man in the picture, the boy said this all happened before he made his statement.
He testified that the man wore the same clothes when he saw him at the school gate on July 17, 2018.
“Who told you to come to court and say that you saw this man at the school gate? Because it never happened,” Naidoo told the boy.
But the teen stuck to his evidence in chief.
He said he told the police about the two friends he was with, and about the man offering one of them R10 if he went to look for Miguel inside the school, but he did not know why this was not mentioned in his statement.
He said the police read his statement to him before he signed it.
The trial continues.