OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday 9.30pm.
A 19-year-old SBV security guard who survived the 1997 Bronkhorstspruit cash in transit heist, on Monday told the Pretoria High Court that he had to receive psychiatric treatment after seeing the mutilated bodies of two colleagues who were shot in the head at close range by the ambushers.
A number of SBV guards are testifying against 15 men who are pleading not guilty for their alleged role in the heist in which two guards were killed. The heist was unusual for its military precision, and marked the start of what has become a spate of similar heists.
Perry Kruger, 19, described how the van in which he and another guard, Carel Muller, were travelling, in a convey of three vehicles, was forced to stop under a hail of automatic gunfire. He said they jumped out of the vehicle, climbed a roadside fence and ran for nearby bushes while bullets flew aorund them. He described how a bakkie pulled up behind the van. Kruger said he saw a group of men shouting at each other and then breaking open the back door of the van before loading the cash onto the bakkie.
Former security guard Nolah Shkaidy, also a victim of the heist, told the court he was so upset on hearing that two of his colleagues, Philippus Theunis van Staden and Andrew Charslund, had been killed in the heist that he emptied his pistol into the ground and broke the window of a van with a rock.
Shkaidy said he also had to receive psychiatric treatment and said he now suffers from nightmares and a loss of memory. Loud noises also frightened him, he added. All 15 of the accused — three of whom are former police detectives — are pleading not guilty to a total of 18 charges, including murder, attempted murder, hijacking, illegal possession of arms and armed robbery.
05