Mark Scott-Crossley was in 2004 convicted for the murder of a worker who he threw into a lion enclosure.
Silence Mabunda, the Limpopo man allegedly attacked and then driven over with a 4×4 by Hoedspruit landowner Mark Scott-Crossley, said the former fugitive must rot in jail.
Scott-Crossley handed himself over to the police in Pretoria on Wednesday after being on the run since December.
“I feel relieved that he is arrested, because I was living in fear. I know he will rot in jail,” Mabunda, 37, said when he heard the news.
Earlier this month, Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo said a warrant of arrest had been issued on December 21 for Scott-Crossley, who is facing a charge of attempted murder.
In December, News24 reported that Mabunda, an employee at the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre near Hoedspruit, had opened a case against Scott-Crossley for the apparently racist attack.
Mabunda claimed that Scott-Crossley had attacked him at a Hoedspruit shop while he was buying airtime. He allegedly grabbed and smashed Mabunda’s cellphone.
Witnesses apparently identified the man as Scott-Crossley.
‘Because I don’t like black people’
“As I was leaving the shop, my phone started to ring. A white guy smashed it to the ground when I answered it. The cover and screen broke,” Mabunda said.
“Two other white guys tried to stop him and asked why he had done that. He then said ‘because I don’t like black people’.
“I also asked him why he did it and he said ‘don’t speak to me like that, ek sal jou bliksem [I will hit you]’.”
Mabunda said he was heading back to work after the cellphone incident when the same man drove toward him.
“Around 7pm, a car was driving slowly next to me. I quickly realised that the guy in the car was the one who broke my phone,” he said.
The driver allegedly turned his vehicle around and drove straight for Mabunda, knocking him over, and then apparently reversed over him.
“Since the attack, I can’t do anything for myself. I am still walking on crutches and I can barely walk on my left leg,” Mabunda said.
The father of four said the attack had cost him financially. “I am unable to work and provide for my wife and kids. We are expecting our fifth child at the end of the month [January].”
Scott-Crossley is expected to appear in the Hoedspruit Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
He made international headlines in 2005 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a former employee, Nelson Chisale. Scott-Crossley helped two of his employees try to dispose of the body by throwing it into a lion enclosure.
He appealed his sentence and the court found the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Chisale was alive when he was thrown into the enclosure. Scott-Crossley was released on parole in August 2008 and returned to his property on the road to Kruger National Park.
Mabunda said he would never forgive Scott-Crossley for the alleged attack.
“He ran over me just because I am a black person. Why didn’t he do that to a white person? Only God will forgive him, because I will never,” he said. — News24