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'I needed cell to feed family'
31/05/2007 22:13 - (SA)
Pretoria - A man who nearly killed a court prosecutor by attacking her with a knife told Pretoria High Court he did so because he wanted her cellphone so that he could feed his children.
Sipho Mnisi, 33, of Hammanskraal, testified before Judge Tholi Vilakazi that it had never been his intention to kill control prosecutor Marisa Booyse when he stabbed her 14 times.
He said he wanted her cellphone so that he could sell it to get food for his children, but had ended up stabbing her because she "fought back".
Booyse earlier told the court she was sitting behind her desk in her office at the Magistrate's Court when Mnisi suddenly moved forward and started attacking her.
She could not remember if she tried to stop him from taking her cellphone on the desk in front of her, but said she would not have been able to stop him if he had simply grabbed it and run away.
Under psychiatric care
The incident had traumatised her to such an extent that she had still not been able to return to work eight months later.
Another prosecutor, who came to her aid, was also under psychiatric care and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment earlier this week, she said.
Mnisi said in evidence he had been a car guard at Centurion Mall, where teenager Peet van der Merwe, 18, died after being stabbed with a broken bottle one night in June 2005, but said he knew nothing about the incident.
He told the court he was in Stinkwater on the night when Van der Merwe was attacked and claimed that Van der Merwe's friend, Alex Barnard, had identified him as the attacker only because Barnard had seen him immediately before a police identity parade.
Had smoked dagga
Barnard told the court he had recognised Mnisi immediately when he looked into his eyes.
The court heard earlier that Van der Merwe was attacked and robbed of his cellphone after he and his friends had smoked dagga with an unknown group of men.
The trial continues.
- SAPA
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