CCTV footage showing several men running along Naiad Street soon after they allegedly drowned two men in a lake at Rhodes Park and sexually assaulted and raped their wives was on Wednesday shown in the High Court sitting at the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court.
Patrick Murphy, who is member Community Policing Forum, previously told the court he obtained the footage after he went around making inquiries at the houses surrounding the park.
He said he found the footage incriminating the men to the crime at Neon Da Fonseca Fernandes’s house. However, he said the time recorded on the camera was right, but the date was wrong – it was set one day ahead.
The black an white footage showed eight men running away from the park.
The three accused Nkala, Edmore Ndlovu, 23, Mduduzi Lawrence Mathibela, 32, who are in the dock were allegedly part of this gang accused of robbery, rape and murder.
At 19:06 the first man is seen running. The he suddenly stops and starts walking. Seconds later a man with dreadlocks with a pair of shoes in his hands came running.
He was subsequently followed by other other three men. A other man is seen running alone. A short while later two more men emerge on the other side of the road.
The footage which was in different angles, showed the men from the front and back.
According to Murphy, an informer identified the men in the video and provided information that led to the arrest of Nkala, who went by the name of Rasta.
“Nkala confessed to being the man seen with dreadlocks and holding shoes,” Murphy said.
He said Nkala also named everyone filmed in the footage and insisted that he didn’t rape the women, but only robbed them and forced the men to wade into the lake.
“When we arrested Nkala, he was cooperative, and he said something to the effect that he won’t go down alone and he helped us identify some of the suspects on the video which corroborated with what the informer had told us,” Murphy said.
Ndlovu and Mathibela were subsequently arrested for the crimes committed in October, last year.
The defence for all the accused men argued about the quality of the footage and said that the video “wasn’t clear” and couldn’t be used to positively identity the suspects.
Murphy, however, told the court that: “I can’t positively identity the suspects on the video because I’m not familiar with them. But if these people were my friends I would easily identify them from the way they walked and from their clothes. But we had two different sources who positively identified the men because they know them”.
Lawyer Thulasizwe Mpanza for Nkala said his client denied identifying himself on the video or even assisting police with the names of the suspects in the footage
The other accused, Ndlovu, who goes by the street name of “Jeje” resembled one of the men in the video clip. Even the hoody he was wearing in court appeared to match the one in the video.
Apollo Mogashoa a forensic analysts positively matched Mathibela’s DNA to the one found on one of the raped women.
Mogashoa said they also matched Mathibela’s DNA to other three rape cases which had not been solved.
Police officer Lufuno Sono, who arrested Nkala and Ndlovu, said both suspects admitted it was them in the footage.
“Accused number 2 (Ndlovu) named the people on the video and said he didn’t rape or murder anyone. He took us to the place of one of the suspects but we didn’t find him,” said Sono.
Both women have already told the court how they were attacked as their husbands drowned in the nearby lake.
The other suspects are still on the run.
At least one suspect has been arrested in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where he is awaiting extradition to South Africa.
The trial resumes Thursday.
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