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Teen tried to save bleeding pal
30/05/2007 21:51 - (SA)
Pretoria - A teenager desperately tried to stem the blood flowing from his friend's chest after he had been stabbed with a broken bottle, the High Court heard on Wednesday.
Alex Barnard was testifying in the trial of Sipho Mnisi, a 33-year-old Hammanskraal man accused of murdering 18-year-old Peet van der Merwe at Centurion shopping mall in June 2005.
Mnisi denied having anything to do with Van der Merwe's death, although he admitted that, in September last year while out on bail for Van der Merwe's alleged murder, he had attacked a control prosecutor at Pretoria Magistrate's Court with a knife and robbed her of a cellphone.
Mnisi admitted guilt to the charge of robbing control prosecutor Marisa Booyse, 37, of her cellphone, but denied he had tried to murder her when he stabbed her 14 times.
Prosecutor still off work
Booyse testified that she thought Mnisi was going to kill her on the spot, because he just kept on stabbing her.
The attack traumatised her to such an extent that she had not yet returned to work, eight months later, and was still under psychiatric care.
Barnard testified that he, his two younger brothers and Van der Merwe had visited the shopping mall in June 2005 when they met a group of men, who started chatting to them and eventually offered them dagga.
After smoking dagga under the bridge at the mall with the men, one of them asked the time.
When Van der Merwe took out his cellphone to see what the time was, he was grabbed by one man while another stabbed him in the arm with a steak knife.
A fight broke out between the two groups and he first went to help his brothers before going to help Van der Merwe, who was fighting with Mnisi, who was wearing an overall and a beanie.
"He (Mnisi) had a beer bottle with him, which he broke against the wall and used to stab Peet in the chest.
"I tried to stop the bleeding. Peet said we must help him. When I opened his shirt, I saw there was a hole in his chest," he said.
Was wearing a beanie
Barnard stayed with his friend, trying to help him until police and an ambulance arrived.
He never saw any of the four men again until he identified Mnisi as his friend's attacker, at a police identity parade six months later.
Mnisi said he was not near Centurion that day and was selling clothes in Arcadia, but Barnard insisted he was not making a mistake.
"He had a beanie pulled low over his forehead and had a slight beard on the day of the attack, but when I saw his eyes I immediately knew it was him," he said.
The trial continues.
- SAPA
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