/ 22 November 2007

Murdered over a baseball cap

Minutes before being shot dead in an argument over a baseball cap, Godfrey Hendricks challenged his two alleged killers to take the cap from him by force.

The two men then fetched a firearm from their car parked nearby. Two shots were fired, leaving Hendricks lying dead on the ground.

A witness to the bizarre challenge, Candice Olivier, on Thursday told the Cape High Court the two men then got into a gold-coloured bakkie and drove away — leaving the cap behind.

Before Judge Andre le Grange and two assessors are Ebraheem Jacobs and Gareth Leetz, who are on trial for the Hendricks murder as well as for the alleged murder of Woodstock detective Lourens le Roux, who was investigating them for the Hendricks murder.

Olivier told the court that Jacobs and Leetz arrived at the home where she lived with Hendricks and others, and demanded from Hendricks a baseball cap that Jacobs claimed belonged to his sister.

She said Hendricks, nicknamed ”Baby”, was wearing the cap at the time, and refused to hand it over, which led to an argument. In the heat of the argument, Hendricks informed Jacobs and Leetz that they would have to use force to take the cap from him.

Advocate Nazeem Cassim, for Jacobs, told Olivier that Jacobs claimed to have been away on holiday with his family, at Montague Springs in the Boland, at the time Hendricks was shot dead. For this reason, Jacobs could not have been involved in the murder, Cassim said.

Olivier replied: ”Then he must have an identical twin brother.”

Police inspectors Mias Engelbrecht and Mark McClean, both of the organised crime unit, told the court Jacobs’s arrest at his home had led them to a drug rehabilitation centre on the Cape Flats, where Leetz was under treatment.

McClean told the court he and Engelbrecht together had done an early-hours swoop on the clinic, where staff showed them to a room where Leetz was asleep. They woke Leetz, informed him they were police and arrested him for the two murders.

The case continues on January 28 next year. — Sapa