Pretoria - While the alleged hitmen on trial for killing Mmakau police constable Solomon Lucky Sebati and his entire family contradict each other about who pulled the trigger, fingerprints found on the family's stolen vehicle tell a different story.
According to the confession statement of Kagiso Mokone, one of the alleged hitmen behind the killing of constable Sebati and his family on the night of December 6 2016, he was the getaway driver responsible for driving a white Chrysler vehicle belonging to the officer.
Mokone detailed how his cousin and co-accused Tumelo Mokone, went into the family house and shot constable Sebati, his wife, daughter and young son, while at the same time he stayed outside to prepare their getaway vehicle.
This was in contradiction to his cousin's confession statement read out in court on yesterday, in which Tumelo claimed that it was in fact (Mokone) who went inside the house with Onthatile Sebati, the family's only surviving member and the alleged mastermind behind the hit.
In Tumelo's version, he claimed that Mokone (Kagiso) went inside the house and shot the family while he stayed outside to start the family vehicle after he could not open the main gate.
The state however threw a spanner in the works for the accused as they called in colonel Neels Botha a fingerprint expert as well as a representative from First National Bank (FNB).
According to Botha, the police had managed to find the top part of the left-hand thumbprint on the door handle of the driver's side of the family's stolen vehicle.
He told the court that during the investigations they were able to identify and positively match the fingerprint found on the vehicle with that of Tumelo.
The expert further testified that he had conducted the verification of the fingerprint again in the morning as he took the prints of Tumelo in the presence of his defence counsel.
Meanwhile, Tshepo Khutsone, the Local market operations manager at FNB, brought bank statements of the accused which showed transactions that were conducted between the trio in 2020.
Khutsone told the court that an amount of R100 000 was transferred from Sebati's Capitec account into Tumelo's account on January 23, 2020.
On the same day, Tumelo allegedly made two transactions in the amount of R25 000 each into the account of Mokone.
Following the testimony of Botha and Khutsone, the trial was postponed and set down to resume on March 14 up to the March 23.
Pretoria News