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THE MERCURY<\/p>\n
Investigating officer Warrant Officer AB Pillay (right) with the docket outside court. With him on the left is another member of the investigation team, Warrant Officer TV Govender. Photo: Tania Broughton<\/p>\n
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Durban – A close friend of three of the men accused of beating Brett Williams to death described them as coming from \u201cgreat\u201d families, raised well, and never left wanting as children. <\/p>\n
They were, however, heavy drinkers and aggressive when drunk. <\/p>\n
The friend, who declined to be named, said he had known two of the accused for more than 10 years, and the other for eight years. \u201cThey are not usually troublemakers, but they drank a lot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The friend said he had once been on the receiving end of a confrontation with one of the accused after they had been drinking. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was dopped-up and slapped me through the face. I always kept it in the dark because we were good friends.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said the same friend had had run-ins with others in the past. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was devastating to deal with the possibility of their having beaten a man to death. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA sober person would not have done that,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Although he was not at Kings Park at the time of the incident, he said he had been told by several friends that the accused were drunk. <\/p>\n
Witnesses who saw the attack on Williams described one of the accused as looking like a \u201cbodybuilder\u201d. The friend would not be drawn on whether the \u201cbodybuilder\u201d was taking steroids. <\/p>\n
Besides the family, friends, and journalists who packed the Durban Magistrate\u2019s Court on Thursday, some people interested in the case were also in the gallery. <\/p>\n
Jeff Harper, a local rugby coach, said he had come to watch proceedings and see justice served. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen too much going on after rugby with drinking involved,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWho threw the first punch is immaterial; the poor guy (Williams) gets murdered, and that\u2019s offside.\u201d <\/p>\n
Harper said the public interest in the trial had also piqued his interest, so he had looked on Facebook for the court date and time. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Families of the five accused politely declined to speak to the media. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE MERCURY Investigating officer Warrant Officer AB Pillay (right) with the docket outside court. With him on the left is another member of the investigation team, Warrant Officer TV Govender. Photo: Tania Broughton Durban – A close friend of three of the men accused of beating Brett Williams to death described them as coming from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}