Sasha-Leigh accused 'was high'
2005-02-21 18:00
Cape Town - Child-murder and rape accused Moegamat Isaacs was high on dagga on the day Sasha-Leigh Crook, 8, disappeared, his advocate told the Cape High Court on Monday.
Isaacs has pleaded not guilty to both charges, maintaining he has an alibi.
He was arrested on July 16 2003, two days after Sasha-Leigh's body was discovered in a bag in a field in Pelican Heights on the Cape Flats.
His advocate, Dirk Uijs, told the court Isaacs did not remember "perfectly" what happened on Sunday, July 6, the day the child disappeared "because he had partaken of dagga".
Isaacs' case was that he was "slumbering" at a table in the backyard of his home at 45 Adrian Road, Ottery, when Sasha-Leigh's grandmother, his neighbour Priscilla Heneke, came looking for the child.
Isaacs had looked around the back of the house before suggesting Heneke go and look at another house nearby, said Uijs.
Searched all over for child
Heneke told the court Sasha-Leigh had been spending the school holidays with her and her husband.
Heneke, who was going to take her granddaughter to a birthday party at a relatives house, went to look for her shortly after 2pm "and she wasn't there".
She thought Sasha-Leigh might have gone to play next door with Isaacs' niece, Ashiema, and went to look, but the doors and windows were closed.
Other neighbours said Sasha-Leigh had gone into the side entrance of No 45.
At that house, she said: "I tried to open the gate, but I couldn't get it open. I shouted 'Sasha!, Sasha!."
Looking through a hole in the gate, she saw Isaacs come from the back of the house.
"He said, 'Sasha's not here', and I went away."
She said she knew Isaacs.
Another witness, Martina Jacobs, said she, her mother and two older sisters saw Isaacs come out of the side gate of his home across the road, at No 45, and go into his front yard.
At the same time, about 13:30, Sasha-Leigh came across to Isaacs from her grandmother's front yard.
"It seemed like they spoke to each other, and she followed him back to the side gate, and I didn't see them after that."
About 15 minutes later Heneke came and asked if the Jacobses had seen Sasha-Leigh.
Found body near sportsfield
"I told her I had seen Sasha-Leigh across the road at No 45, and she should ask there," she said.
Security guard Daniel Geduld told the court how he found Sasha-Leigh's body near a sportsfield when he followed tyre tracks across sandy ground while patrolling on July 14.
He said he saw the white of a skull, which he initially thought was a doll, and called police.
Sasha-Leigh's mother, Michelle Crooks, sat at the front of the court through the day's proceedings, taking notes of witnesses' testimony.
- SAPA