The Daily Dispatch E-Edition

Defence drills case officer in bail hearing

LULAMILE FENI

The defence counsel of a man who has admitted to shooting a traffic cop spent Wednesday cross-examing the investigating officer in the case during his client ’ s bail application.

Thobani Noah, for Siphesonke Galoshe, was drilling Col Bongani Siyotula in the Mthatha magistrate’s court.

At issue were claims by Galoshe that, after he shot Daniel Mxoli on October 10, he went to Lusikisiki and stayed in a flat he once rented there.

In a statement to the police, Galoshe’s Lusikisiki landlady, known only as Doris, had said Galoshe moved out of her flat on May 10 and never returned.

Galoshe had been teaching at Toli High School, in Lusikisiki, but after an incident there in May he left and went to work at Tutor Ndamase Senior Secondary School, in Ngqeleni.

The landlady said she had last seen Galoshe at her flat on May 10, the day he left Lusikisiki.

Noah said after the shooting his client stayed at the flat from October 10 to 14.

“In her statement, the landlady says she does not stay at the flats but in Port St Johns,” Noah put to Siyotula. “This suggests she was not in a position to see the applicant at the flats.

“There is nothing that says she heard from [someone else] that [he] was not present.”

Siyotula conceded he was not disputing Galoshe’s evidence that he had gone to Lusikisiki, and that had the landlady been in Port St Johns, she would not have been in a position to notice Galoshe at the flat.

Galoshe, an agricultural studies teacher, intends to plead the fatal shooting was not murder but self-defence.

The investigating officer is opposing bail.

The bail hearing has been postponed to Friday.

The defence asked magistrate Steve Meyer and prosecutor Mzwandile Ndamase that the closing legal arguments be completed on Friday.

News

en-za

2022-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://dispatch.pressreader.com/article/281565179795754

Arena Holdings PTY