Africa-Press – South-Africa. The man accused of kidnapping, raping, and murdering 8-year-old Cape Town girl Tazné van Wyk, then chopping her left hand off and dumping her body in a storm drain in February 2020, claimed a group of foreign nationals in a taxi did it, and that they also held him captive.
He said he tried to stop them from taking Tazné away but he was in the back of a bakkie with his hands and feet tied, and could not do much.
He said he tried so hard to save her that she scratched his hand when she was wrenched away from him by the mysterious woman and three men they had earlier helped with directions.
“She grabbed my hand and I had her hand. She (Tazné) couldn’t get a grip so she scratched me on the right hand,” he said.
He said people in a Quantum had driven them all the way to Worcester from Cape Town after they gave them directions to Malawi Camp in Cape Town. He and Tazné were then stranded in Worcester and were trying to get a lift back to Cape Town along the N1.
But to his dismay, the people in the Quantum returned later that night, only this time they were driving a Toyota bakkie with a canopy on it.
Man accused of killing 8-year-old Tazné van Wyk tells court how he ended up on CCTV footage with her
They helped Tazné into the back, and the little girl seemed pleased that they would get back his bag he had forgotten in the Quantum earlier. She had earlier said that she was cold and the duvet in his bag would have been nice.
He claimed he was reluctant to climb into the bakkie, so they pushed his legs in, forcing him in. “What if they had something sharp, or a gun?” he asked.
They drove around and passed a river, a dam and some rocks, with bushes.
He said little Tazné told him, “Uncle, it’s cold here.”
After a lot of driving around and stopping, a scuffle started in the back of the bakkie. The accused said he tried to fight back but he couldn’t because the mysterious people had tied him up.
Then Tazné said she needed to urinate, and when they were near Touws River, the bakkie stopped, and she was let out to urinate.
Tazné seemed to be taking long so she was grabbed and put in the back of the bakkie and the mysterious people, whose language he did not understand, headed back to Laingsburg.
At one point, the driver blew smoke from a pipe into his face.
“I was never a smoker, so I can’t say what they smoked,” he testified.
He said he pleaded with them to let Tazné out of the bakkie.
Back near Worcester again, they took Tazné out of the vehicle.
“Tazne started screaming,” he testified.
“Then I got worried because I couldn’t hear Tazné. I screamed, ‘Tazné!’ She didn’t answer. I couldn’t see anything in the dark.”
Man accused of killing Tazné van Wyk, 8, forgets her name during testimony
He saw that the woman’s hand was covered in blood, and then one of the men came back to the bakkie looking for something to wipe blood off his hands.
Then the other man emerged from bushes carrying Tazné wrapped in something, and he could see blood.
The strangers then drove near a garage outside Worcester, and the bakkie stopped again. Tazné’s body was placed in a storm drain. He said the bakkie then drove to just outside Bloemfontein.
He said he was “dik gerook” (very high) because of the smoke that had been blown in his face.
He was asked why he did not call the police or tell anyone. He said his phone was flat, he was scared, and couldn’t make sense of what had happened.
“There was nothing I could say,” he said.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
