Africa-Press – South-Africa. The trial of the three men accused of murdering Cape Town lawyer Pete Mihalik was supposed to conclude on Thursday.
However, it was adjourned to Monday after the State indicated it had more questions for the alleged hitman and self-described second-hand gold dealer in the dock.
It has been a gruelling week for Vuyile Maliti, who owns taxis in Khayelitsha, as he was asked for the finer details of what he did more than four years ago on 30 October 2018, the day Mihalik was gunned down.
Mihalik was taking his children to school and was just about to drop them off when a gunman emerged from the pavement and shot him twice. He died soon after, with his engine still running and music from the car still playing.
His children will have to wait a little longer to find out whether the police caught the right men, as the State plans to deal with a few more loose ends regarding the movement of the three on the day of the murder.
The three pleaded not guilty to Mihalik’s murder and not guilty to the attempted murder of his two children.
The trio insist that they were doing a Krugerrand deal in the parking lot of the Cape Quarter Spar at the time.
Maliti’s co-accused, Sizwe Biyela and Nkosinathi Khumalo, have testified that they travelled from Durban with a stash of gold coins in their bag to sell through Maliti.
However, by the end of the day, both were in custody, sans coins and money, and facing murder charges.
Maliti was the only one still at large, with almost R200 000 in cash earned through the sale of some of their coins at the Kenilworth Gold Exchange.
When he realised the police were searching his parents’ home for him, he found out that he could not get a lawyer in Cape Town to help him out of his jam.
Khumalo and Biyela were picked up by police through a link made between a Renault Clio and a VW Golf pulled over for skipping a stop street and the same cars being spotted near the scene of the murder.
The Renault Clio has never been found, and the hired VW Golf was tracked on the same day to a panel beater’s yard in Khayelitsha, where it was about to be “repaired”.
After being on the run for a week, Maliti finally presented himself to the police and joined the other two in court. He secured the services of a lawyer from Johannesburg.
On Monday, prosecutor Greg Wolmarans will continue with further examination of Maliti’s movements around the time of the murder, based on his cellphone location records.
All of the accused say they have alibis, but nobody has come to court to vouch for them.
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