Lack of fingerprints stops law
2003-08-26 19:22
Cape Town - The failure to obtain fingerprints from a group of seven awaiting-trial prisoners who escaped from the Athlone Magistrate's Court two years ago, on Tuesday resulted in them being sentenced as first offenders.
They appeared in the Wynberg regional court before Magistrate Fransie Mouton, who said their criminal records, if any, were not available to the court, as a result of the failure to obtain their fingerprints.
She said the escape, on February 14, 2001, although not planned, had been orchestrated, and had happened on a day when there had been a severe shortage of court orderlies.
The main instigator, Lucky Fungung, 25, was effectively jailed for 13 years.
Apart from the escape itself, Fungung was jailed also for armed robbery, the illegal possession of two firearms and ammunition, attempted murder and assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.
The magistrate said the court had a duty to protect not only the community but the police as well, which included court orderlies whose job was often as dangerous as those out on patrol.
She said the escape had happened at a time when severe police staff shortages had caused the deployment in the courts of police not accustomed to court orderly duties.
She said one such (unnamed) policeman was on guard at a heavy gate between the court room and the holding cells, but he had not been at his post when court orderly John Melton led the group from the court room to the cells.
The group had realised Melton's predicament, and in a flash had overpowered him, grabbed both his service and private firearms and attacked him with his baton.
As colleagues rushed to Melton's aid, Fungung fired a shot at Inspector Johannes Daniels, narrowly missing his head, and a second colleague, Gavin Pool, was kicked.
The magistrate said Daniels had bumped the firearm out of the way in the nick of time, otherwise Fungung would have faced a murder charge instead of attempted murder.
The group then commandeered a taxi, threatening the driver Moegamat Haywood with a firearm.
Five of Fungung's co-accused got jail sentences ranging from nine to three years, while Mouton suspended the passing of a sentence on the sixth, a youth, for five years.
- SAPA