The first witness in the drunken-driving case of Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride told the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday that he was told he and his family would be murdered if he did not help in a cover-up for McBride.
State witness Chief Superintendent Stanley Sagathevan said in his testimony that he initially lied to cover for McBride because he had been intimidated on an ”ongoing” basis.
This was after he apparently helped McBride obtain a false medical certificate, intimidated the investigating officer and made a false statement on McBride’s car accident in December 2006.
It is alleged that McBride, who is currently on ”administrative leave”, was travelling from a metro police year-end function when he rolled his car on the R511, south-west of Pretoria.
On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to charges of drunken driving, fraud and defeating the ends of justice.
Sagathevan, the first to testify in the state’s case, said it took five months for him to come clean because McBride was influential and he was scared to testify against him.
”[I] believe my life [and] career were on the line,” he told McBride’s counsel, advocate Guido Penzhorn, SC.
Sagathevan, who is still in the employment of the Ekurhuleni metro police department, said that McBride threatened him and his family that his wife would be raped and his children and pets killed.
He said he made the statement to the police because he was tired of the constant threats and having his house watched.
McBride sat in the dock dressed in a dark striped suit with a white shirt and green tie. He listened as his colleague described him as a difficult person to work with.
Sagathevan also admitted to taking part in illegal activities under McBride’s instruction.
Earlier he told the court how he and McBride as well as two former officers, Itumeleng Koko and Patrick Johnson, travelled to Durban to try to secure a false medical certificate stating that McBride had suffered from low blood sugar on the night of the accident.
Magistrate Peet Johnson and his two assessors heard how in the quest for a medical certificate, a Johannesburg priest had been approached to draw up the false document.
This comes after McBride allegedly drank half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label and shared another bottle of Jack Daniels whisky with Sagathevan. ”He wasn’t sober enough to drive,” Sagathevan said.
McBride speech was slurred before his accident, Sagathevan said. He told the court how he had offered to drive McBride to his Waterkloof home but that his boss refused.
After receiving a phone call informing him of McBride’s accident, Sagathevan drove McBride to his cousin’s, who is a medical doctor, to get medical attention.
He said that while this was going on, he received an SMS from director Trish Armstrong saying that he had been driving at the time of the accident while McBride had been in the passenger seat. This made him assume that there was a cover-up.
He said that while the doctor was examining McBride, he agreed that the doctor could draw his blood instead. The doctor refused.
After leaving the doctor, McBride instructed him that should there be any queries about his whereabouts, he was to tell people that McBride had been seriously injured in the accident and was in an unnamed hospital.
Pictures taken at the year-end function in the Hartbeespoort Dam area as well as a bill from a Durban hotel were handed up as evidence.
The case was postponed to Tuesday, for further cross-examination of Sagathevan.
McBride was taken from court through a basement passage. — Sapa