A prankster working for Cape Town’s former South Peninsula municipality who put an envelope supposedly containing anthrax on a colleague’s desk was sentenced on Thursday to a fine of R2 000, or 90 days in jail.
Jerome Andrews (35), a municipal plan examiner, appeared in the Wynberg Regional Court before magistrate Robert Henney, who conditionally suspended R1 500 of the full amount, or 60 days.
Andrews was found guilty of common assault after prosecutor Serisa Swanepoel withdrew a main charge of intimidation in plea-bargain proceedings.
She described the incident, in October 2002, as a ”prank gone horribly wrong”.
The magistrate agreed with defence attorney William Booth that the incident did not demand a severe sentence.
Henney said the incident happened during a worldwide anthrax scare in which some victims exposed to real anthrax concealed in envelopes had in fact died. Because of this, the interests of justice expected the court to frown on Andrews’s behaviour, Henney said.
Henney said the joke, played on Eugene Wicht, had been in bad taste and had resulted in the emergency services and bomb disposal experts being called to the scene. He shuddered at the thought of the anxiety and fear that the incident had caused Wicht, until Wicht finally realised it was a hoax.
Andrews could consider himself lucky that he had been present at Wicht’s office when emergency personnel arrived, when Andrews informed them it was a joke. In a struggling democracy like South Africa’s with meagre resources, the country could not afford the wasted expense of hoaxes and the disruptions they caused, Henney said. – Sapa