- The trial of the three men accused of murdering lawyer Pete Mihalik resumed in the Western Cape High Court with testimony on early breakthroughs in the investigation.
- The first breakthrough was bringing in the first person of interest after a low-key traffic violation.
- The court heard that police searched a house in Blue Downs for another suspect, to no avail.
The first person to be linked to the assassination of Cape Town lawyer Pete Mihalik looked nervous and his cellphone rang incessantly while he was being questioned by police shortly after the murder, the Western Cape High Court heard on Tuesday.
Sergeant Isaac Tshabalala was one of the first police officers to speak to Nkosinathi Khumalo, who was initially brought in for a traffic violation, but he quickly became a suspect in the murder of Mihalik.
Khumalo, Sizwe Biyela and Vuyile Maliti are on trial for the murder of Mihalik and the attempted murder of Mihalik's children on 30 October 2018 in Green Point. They have all pleaded not guilty.
When Khumalo was taken to Sea Point police station, not long after the murder, by traffic official Boy Makutu, he already had a traffic fine to his name, with Maliti's address.
Makutu cracked the case wide open by bringing in a man who was in a car which had sped away while he was writing out a ticket for skipping an intersection.
That man turned out to be Khumalo, who had returned to the intersection on foot.
By then it was all hands on deck in the crucial first hours after the murder, with an inner and outer perimeter set at the crime scene, CCTV footage and witness statements being collected, and Mihalik's son at the hospital receiving medical treatment for a wound to his neck.
The police had also seen CCTV footage of the vehicles used in the murder and linked them to the vehicles Makutu had pulled over for not stopping at an intersection, so Khumalo was put on the spot.
Questioned by Tshabalala, Khumalo said he had arrived in Cape Town from KwaZulu-Natal by bus on 29 October.
Maliti fetched him from the bus stop, and they drove home on a road that he did not know, but he would recognise it if he saw it because there was some construction on the way.
He said they had gone into a large gated complex and had seen another man, also from KwaZulu-Natal, there.
Tshabalala said that while they had been talking at the Sea Point police station, Khumalo looked nervous, stuttering slightly, looking down, and that his cellphone had rung incessantly.
Eventually, Tshabalala took the phone out of Khumalo's pocket and saw the same name coming up on the screen every time the phone rang.
"With his phone being active, we can ping it," he testified.
He immediately let his immediate boss, the late Anti-Gang Unit detective Charl Kinnear, know.
A convoy of at least 10 marked police vehicles went to Khayelitsha to look for Maliti at the address on the traffic fine, but a woman at the address said he lived in Blue Downs.
They then drove in convoy towards Blue Downs and passed some construction work which seemed corroborate Khumalo's information.
They looked at complexes around Blue Downs, eliminating two near the Mfuleni police station, and finally settled on Bardale Village.
He said:
Eventually, Khumalo pointed out one of the units, and the house was breached, by breaking through the security gate and door.
They took Khumalo inside for him to show them where he slept and where his clothes were.
"That's when he said: 'Ha-ah, this was not the house'."
Tshabalala had to make a call - either breach all of the houses, or stop the search. He opted to stop.
Kinnear then told him that the phone that was calling Khumalo constantly was pinging at the Shoprite in Langa, and they then raced across town to investigate.
The trial continues.