Man's wait for dead footballer

2008-12-01 22:30

Ramsgate - A Johannesburg man told the Ramsgate High Court on Monday how he waited in vain for an Austrian footballer to pick him up from Durban International Airport.

Neil Smith, who had befriended Peter Burgstaller at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, said: "On the Saturday evening I called him, and his phone was off. And when I got to the (Durban) airport on Sunday morning he wasn't there to pick me up.

"After 10 minutes' waiting I thought there might be something wrong.

"Peter Burgstaller was incredibly reliable. I went to (the airport) information to see if someone had been looking for me."

Smith was giving testimony at the trial of Thokozisi Msani, 26, and Simo Msani, 22.

The two brothers, who earlier pleaded not guilty, are accused of robbing and shooting Burgstaller, 43, on the Selbourne Estate golf course near Pennington on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Friday, November 23, last year.

Smith said that he then called Selbourne Estate.

'I didn't know what to do'

"One of the managers from the golf estate said that he had been shot and killed. I couldn't believe what I had heard. I sat at the airport for about half an hour not sure what to do," he said.

"I wanted to go straight home, but I couldn't. I had to give a statement to the police," he said.

Earlier, Smith - who runs his own sports management company - told the court that Burgstaller had planned to meet up with officials from the Austrian Football Federation as well as Austrian broadcast journalists belonging to a network he believed to be ORD.

Burgstaller had, according to Smith, aimed to get accreditation to attend the preliminary draw for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

He told the court than when Burgstaller arrived at O R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on November 23, the former footballer from Salzburg called Smith to say that he would catch a connecting flight to Durban so that he could play golf that afternoon.

"He expressed a keen desire to play golf. He said he was really looking forward to playing golf in the sunshine," said Smith.

Devastated

The last time Smith heard from the former footballer was on that Friday afternoon, as Burgstaller was on his way to the Selbourne golf course.

Smith later met up with the team from the Austrian broadcasters, whom he described as being "so devastated" that they did not want to leave their Durban hotel.

It is alleged that after he was shot, Burgstaller was robbed of R320 and his Nokia 9300 cellphone.

Smith identified the number of the phone as that of Burgstaller and said the phone looked exactly like the one Burgstaller had owned.

Advocate Thulani Shange said that his client Thokozisi Msani had never seen the cellphone.

However, Advocate Bongani Ndlela said his client - Simo Msani - said the phone looked exactly like the phone that was given to him by his brother Thokozisi.

Murder weapon found in field

Earlier the two brothers pleaded not guilty and Shange said that Thokozisi had been chopping wood on the day of the murder when he came across a cellphone.

Shange said the court would hear that he gave the phone to Simo when he returned home.

His client, he said, had not been found in possession of the murder weapon and that the first time he had seen the 9mm pistol was when police took him to a sugar cane field belonging to his grandmother.

The gun was in the field.

Inspector Sean Edgar Pedlar told the court that police's forensics unit had found a 9mm spent cartridge from the gun two days after the murder.

It had been found after police combed the 12th tee at the Selbourne Golf Estate with a metal detector.

- SAPA