Three of the five men who allegedly ambushed and shot dead seven people near Willowvale — four of whom were members of the same family — were driving a vehicle stolen from a government hospital in the Western Cape.
The accused allegedly dumped the vehicle after the fatal shooting of the seven, who included an eight-year-old boy, his parents and his brother..
On Friday, the accused told Butterworth magistrate Phumla Wotshela they were not involved in the mass shooting but had themselves been ambushed and shot at.
They conceded they had not reported the incident. They were arrested in the Western Cape five days after the shooting.
Inga Sogidashe, 33, Vumile Lola, 37, and Siphelele Ntshiyane, 33, appeared for the fourth time to apply for bail, while two others, Luthando Sobonde, 25, and Gcobani Bodlwana, 26, appeared before Wotshela at the Butterworth magistrate’s court on Thursday and Friday, also to apply for bail.
They face nine charges including six counts of murder. They said they would plead not guilty.
Bodlwana and Sobonde abandoned their bail bids.
Sogidashe, Ntshiyane and Sobonde said they knew nothing about the offence.
“We were ambushed and shot at by a group of unknown gunmen,” Sogidashe told the court.
“We never shot and/or killed any people.”
He said on the day of the shooting, he and his friends were in Nqadu village in Willowvale attending the funeral of a taxi owner who had been gunned down.
They were shot at in Nonxanxashe village as they were going to Ntshiyane’s home in Dadamba.
“I was driving my VW Polo and was travelling with Avumile and Siphelele.
“It was just after 11pm. I was hit and injured my right leg and the vehicle got jammed during the process of the shooting. We left the crime scene.”
He did not say why they did not phone the police or report the shooting.
State prosecutor Namba Guzana told the court that the accused had abandoned the vehicle because they knew it was hijacked and was not registered in any of their names.
“You knew the vehicle had been hijacked and stolen from a state hospital in the Western Cape and you changed its registration to the Eastern Cape,” Guzana said.
“You travelled in it on a mission to shoot and attack your rival group in Willowvale.
“You never reported the shooting to police before you were arrested in the Western Cape five days later.”
Sogidashe said the vehicle had been left to him by a fellow taxi owner who died two weeks before the Willowvale shooting.
He did not say why he had dumped the car.
Sogidashe told the court he was the owner of a fleet of six taxis and two sedans and owned a house in Mfuleni in Cape Town and in Willowvale.
He said he was the father of a three-year-old child and the child’s mother, a nurse, was four months pregnant.
Denying him bail would affect his business and his vehicles would be repossessed.
He said he paid a total of R54,800 a month for all his vehicles.
He said they were arrested in Swellendam after police found a bag with five bullets in the car he was driving.
“The bag belongs to Vumile Lola [his co-accused].”
He said after being arrested in Swellendam, they were driven to the Cambridge police station in East London where they were allegedly beaten and suffocated and forced to make confessions.
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