Three Teenagers accused of throwing concrete blocks at cars from an overhead bridge are on trial for murder in what is believed to be one of the first cases of its kind in KwaZulu-Natal.
One was only 14 at the time when, it is alleged, he and two of his friends threw concrete slabs from the Candella Road Bridge on to the busy N3 freeway below on the evening of November 2, 2010.
A slab of reinforced concrete – estimated to be 50cm by 30cm – smashed through the windscreen of Gertrude Mankaba’s Mercedes Benz and into her passenger and work colleague Siphesihle Zola Zuma.
Zuma, 24, died in hospital from her injuries later that night.
At the start of the trial before regional court magistrate Thomas Nhleko the two minors – now 17 and 16 – and their co-accused Lucky Leon Khumalo, who has since turned 18, pleaded not guilty to the charge.
They all elected to remain silent and not to disclose their defence.
Defence attorney Mohamed Hassim asked that the media be barred from the hearing because of their ages but this was contested by prosecutor Krishen Shah who said the case was “contentious”.
“Rock throwing is a problem… it is a current issue… a social issue,” he said.
The magistrate ruled that journalists could stay, saying they knew the rules regarding identification of minors.
Mankaba was the first to give evidence and struggled to keep her composure as she started to explain how she and Zuma, who worked with her as a sales consultant at FNB, were returning from a work function that night.
She was driving towards the bridge near Spaghetti Junction and noticed stones in the middle of the freeway.
“I slowed down to drive around them… and then I heard a bang in the car.”
Too scared to stop straight away, she drove a little way up the freeway and stopped.
“I got out and walked around the car to see if I had a puncture. But there was nothing wrong. Then a tow-truck driver asked if he could tow the car. I asked why, because I could see nothing wrong. Then I saw a big hole in the windscreen.
“I opened the passenger door and saw Zola lying down. The seat was broken… collapsed into the back seat. Her head was between the two front seats.
“I asked (the tow-truck driver) if I could borrow his phone to phone an ambulance. But one seemed to come out of nowhere.”
She said Zuma was taken to hospital and later that night she received a call to say “Zola is gone”.
Mankaba identified photographs taken of her car, showing the smashed windscreen, cement rocks inside the vehicle, and the passenger seat “broken by the force”. She also identified photographs taken the next day showing rocks on the freeway.
Under cross-examination she said she could not explain how the tow-truck driver had seen the damaged windscreen when she had not.
“I never saw the windscreen break. I just heard a bang,” she said.
Navine Nagdutt testified that he was in his bedroom on the second floor of his house when he saw three young men – who he said were the three in the dock – throwing stones off the bridge. He saw them go up the path to look for more rocks and he shouted at them.
Back-up
One looked up but they ran towards Jan Smuts Highway and he told his neighbour Faith Ngema, a metro policewoman, who called for back-up. They both got into their cars but when they located the youngsters, they ran into the bush.
Defence lawyer Hassim suggested that his clients had run away because Nagdutt brandished a firearm but Nagdutt denied this.
One of the accused says he was at the park when all of this happened.
The case continues this week.
l The trial comes just two weeks after bricks and rocks were flung at several cars from the new Blackburn pedestrian bridge, between Blackburn Village and Umhlanga Rocks.
Vishani Rabindranath, 42, of Chatsworth was badly injured when her husband’s car was hit. She is out of hospital but still cannot talk or eat solids.
On the same day another car was hit by a rock thrown from a bridge on the N2 near Sibiya casino.
A month ago Michael Nannucci, 71, of Overport was killed when two bricks were flung on to his car from a pedestrian bridge over the N2 close to the old airport.
