Durban - Blayne Shepard, the sole remaining accused in the Kings Park murder trial, was found guilty of culpable homicide on Monday.
Wearing a dark blue shirt and black tie, Shepard remained composed as Durban Regional Court magistrate Trevor Levitt delivered the verdict, while his mother began to sob.
Shepard had been charged with the murder of Briton Brett Williams at Kings Park rugby stadium after a match between the Sharks and the Melbourne Rebels two years ago. Shepard was 23 at the time.
Levitt found that Williams had been kicked to death, but the State had not proved that the intention had been to kill him.
Williams’s fiancée, Louise Scott, speaking from Somerset in England on Monday, told The Mercury it had been an emotional day for her and that she had expected Shepard to “walk”, as his former co-accused had.
“I have to thank the judge for seeing through it all and arriving at a just verdict. I am satisfied with the verdict. I always maintained that it was irrelevant what happened to the accused because nothing gives Brett his life back, but now I have something to tell Lailah when she is older – that the man responsible did not get away with leaving her without her father all her life.
“It is a comfort to me and I know it will be of comfort to her when the time is right,” Scott said an e-mail.
She said she was grateful for the messages of support she had received from South Africa.
Williams’s best friend, Josh Mills, said in a telephone interview from the UK that it had been “a tough two years and three months”, but that Scott and Williams’s family and friends were trying to rebuild their lives.
His mother and grandparents remained devastated, he said.
Williams, a former Royal Marine, had been working on a ship docked in Durban at the time of his death.
Lailah turned 4 the month after Williams was killed, and Scott and Mills had travelled to Durban last year to attend the trial.
Shepard, his brother Kyle and their friends Andries van der Merwe and Dustin van Wyk were all initially charged with the murder of Williams.
Kyle Shepard, Van der Merwe and Van Wyk were acquitted last year of murder and other crimes in connection with the events of that night. All had pleaded not guilty.
Charges against Shepard’s former friend Grant Cramer were withdrawn and he gave evidence for the State. Cramer testified that he had Williams in a chokehold in an earlier incident, from which he recovered.
Blayne Shepard was acquitted of crimen injuria, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and public violence, but Levitt decided that he had a case to answer regarding the murder charge.
On Monday, Kyle was in court to support his brother, along with several friends. The family did not want to speak to the media.
Levitt delivered an abbreviated version of his judgment, which was more than 100 pages long.
He said that from the collective testimonies of the witnesses, a picture had emerged which fitted “like a hand in a glove”.
The magistrate said Neil Burger had been a reliable and credible witness.
As the general manager of Fidelity Security Services, Burger had been the most senior security official on duty at the rugby stadium on the night Williams had been killed. Burger had testified that he had seen Williams on the ground with Blayne Shepard kicking him and “stomping” on him.
Shepard appeared composed while Levitt read his judgment, at one time inspecting his fingernails and leaning his head against the beam in front of him in the dock.
He was later seen being comforted by a friend in a quiet passage of the courthouse.
Argument on sentencing has been set for the end of August.
The Mercury