HIGH Court judge, Justice Emilia Muchawa, has narrated how a man shot at her vehicle while she was on her way home.
The man thought she was an armed robber who was trailing him.Nation Musekiwa is facing criminal nuisance charges, which he denies.
Justice Muchawa told the court that she and her husband
were on their way home on the day of the shooting.
“As we approached Tom Farm, along Old Mazowe Road, we saw
the accused’s white Honda Civic motor vehicle in front of us, but did not
suspect anything.
“As we were about to turn into Goodhope Road, off Old
Mazowe Road, we realised that the accused’s vehicle was still ahead of us,
moving towards the direction of our place of residence.
“He then stopped his vehicle close to our main gate and
produced a gun and shot at my car.
“I started reversing, and we sought refuge at Justice
Bhunu’s house, which was guarded by police officers.”
She told the court that she surprisingly got a call from
Musekiwa confessing that he was the one who shot at her car.
“The following day at around 9am, I surprisingly got a call
from Musekiwa, on my cell phone, and he introduced himself and said he was the
one who had fired a shot at my car.
“He said he was scared and that he had been attacked in
previous years so had assumed that we were armed robbers.
“I just took his details which I handed over to the
investigating officers.”
Asked what her comment would be if Musekiwa told the court
that he acted in self-defence, as he assumed they wanted to rob him, she said
she didn’t understand why someone driving a Discovery vehicle would rob someone
driving a Honda Civic, which he was driving.
She added that it didn’t make sense to her that he thought
they were robbers because, when they reversed, he started pursuing them.
In cross examination, lawyer Dumisani Mthombeni started by
apologising to the judge for his client’s conduct.
“I would like to start by apologising on behalf of my
client for the trauma he caused you,” he said.
He said the whole case hinges on subjective aspects in
which Musekiwa couldn’t have linked who was seemingly trailing him and just
acted in self-defence, using his pellet gun, to scare his suspected attackers
away.
In his defence outline, Musekiwa denied unlawfully
discharging the pellet gun and denied ever harbouring any criminal intention to
assault the judge.
He further told the court that he fired a warning shot in
the air with his pellet gun solely for the purposes of scaring off what he
thought were potential armed robbers.
He submitted that a pellet gun does not fire out anything
but merely produces sound only and ballistics have confirmed that it was a
pellet gun, hence the criminal nuisance charge is incompetent at law.
The trial continues today. H Metro
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