- The trial of the three men accused of murdering lawyer Pete Mihalik is under way.
- Attendance was in contrast to the howls of outrage that sounded when he was murdered during the school run almost four years ago.
- Mihalik was shot dead as he made a noisy, grand entrance in his Mercedes Benz, to drop his children off at a school in Green Point.
The ponderous pace of the trial of the three men accused of murdering Cape Town lawyer Pete Mihalik contrasted with the shots and terrifying screams that rang out when he was killed in his car in Green Point on 30 October 2018.
At the time, the legal fraternity was shocked that a fellow court officer could be attacked so brazenly. And with his children in his car.
Mihalik was not the first lawyer to be murdered in Cape Town, and there were ripples of outrage and fear among the legal fraternity.
Judges and lawyers attended his memorial, and his funeral was graced by many of the people frequently accused of being gangsters.
Serendipitously, two arrests were made quickly when a traffic officer pulled over two cars that had skipped a stop street near the shooting scene, with a third man who presented himself to police on hearing authorities wanted to question him.
The rumour mill went into overdrive as people speculated what could have led to Mihalik becoming a target.
But, instead of quick answers, the opening days of the trial in the Western Cape High Court were marked by the laborious confirmation of information gathered in the immediate aftermath of the murder, with a strikingly empty public gallery.
Police officers were placed around the court to keep an eye on the accused, as interpreters translated first into isiXhosa, and then isiZulu for their benefit. The three men listened impassively as they sat in the dock, with two clad in warm winter jackets, and one wearing a colourful plaid shirt.
It was a day of high security at the court, with the trial of an alleged faction of the Terrible Josters gang under way, as well as an appeal lodged by Nafiz Modack, accused of killing Anti-Gang Unit detective Charl Kinnear and the attempted murder of lawyer William Booth, under way in separate court rooms in the building.
Kinnear was the lead investigator in the murder of Mihalik.
Instead of the phalanx of lawyers associated with high profile murders, the bench for the legal counsel featured only one lawyer each for the accused, and a prosecutor. At the opposite end of the court, three reporters were whittled down to two after the lunch break.
On Monday, the court heard from witness Frank Scherf that at around the time of nearby Reddam House Atlantic Seaboard's busy school run, he heard shots ring out.
He was in his lounge on the second floor of his building when he heard the shots and rushed to his balcony, then down the steps to the scene. He said there had been a number of incidents of crime in his street, so he paid attention when something happened.
By then, he was used to the sound of the black Mercedes-Benz making a roaring entrance as it approached the school between 07:15 and 07:40.
After the shots, he saw a car driving away faster than usual for traffic for that time of day, and he punched the partial number plate of the vehicle that he caught a glimpse of, into his cellphone. He did this reflexively because there had been several incidents of crime in the area.
He remembered the vehicle as a French make, possibly a Peugeot, but admitted that he was not a car person and might have got it wrong.
He said:
He denied being told what to write in his statement to the police and at that point had no idea who the murder suspects were. He just saw men in the car, but could not identify their clothing or what they looked like.
He said he saw the black Mercedes and saw that a man inside it had been shot. The small child was also hit, so the boy was taken out of the car and rushed to the hospital in another car.
Scherf said he was not keen on making a statement to the police.
"They [the police] came to me and said: 'Please, we need a statement.'"
The trial continues on Tuesday with the next witness, a person who worked at a car hire company. During their bail application, the court heard that the gunmen had been driving rented cars.
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