'Inge has killed herself'
2007-02-21 23:32
Cape Town - Christo Pretorius, the man who found Inge Lotz murdered in her flat, told the first people he phoned that she had committed suicide, he said in the Cape High Court on Wednesday.
One of the three people he called was Marius Botha, flatmate of Fred van der Vyver, who is on trial for Inge's murder.
Pretorius said he had received a phone call from Botha at 22:22 on March 16 2005, asking him to check on Lotz in her flat because "she has a condition and is prone to fainting".
Pretorius added: "He said they had been searching from three o'clock."
Wednesday was the first time that Inge's parents, Professor Jan Lotz and her mother, Juanita, attended court since she had testified last Monday.
Pressed her buzzer three times
Before the court proceedings began it seemed as if Van der Vyver was continually glancing to the left of the dock, to where Inge's parents were sitting.
Pretorius testified that he lived about a kilometre from the Shiraz block of flats where Inge lived.
He went there and after pressing her buzzer at least three times at the entrance hall, he asked someone standing on a balcony to open up for him.
At her flat, Pretorius said he knocked two or three times and saw through a window that the television was on. The door was closed, but not locked, and he went in.
"I saw Inge lying on a sofa - and when I got to her, I saw her neck wound."
Pretorius saw dark patches, which he took to be blood.
"I know I saw blood. From the position in which she was lying, I thought she had committed suicide.
Prosecutor Christhénus van der Vijver asked Pretorius why his first thought had been suicide.
He replied that it was probably because of the shock.
'Got a huge fright'
He also thought he had seen a knife in her hand, but it later turned out to be a remote control.
"I got a huge fright, naturally, and ran out to the person who had let me in. I told him I thought the girl had killed herself.
"He had to phone the police, while I phoned Marius (Botha), Neels (Hendrickse) and Philip (Philip is his brother and Hendrickse his pastor).