A former Piketberg policeman accused of murdering his girlfriend Natasha Booise because she would not spend time with him formally pleaded guilty to shooting her dead. However, because he disputes that the shooting was planned, his trial started immediately after his plea on Tuesday.
Richard “Makka” Smit insists that he did not plan to kill Booise. Judge Andre Le Grange whizzed through three state witnesses in one morning, cutting prosecutor Rene Uys off at times and telling her to move a witness “to the heart of the matter”.
Then, minutes before the lunch break, Smit’s counsel, Advocate Ntokozo Mjiyako, announced that his client would testify. Le Grange took the lunch adjournment and Smit is expected to go into the box after lunch.
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In his plea agreement, Smit admits that he shot Booise dead on 2 January 2022, using his service pistol while drunk. “I admit that I shot the deceased in the back while she was walking away from my vehicle,” he said. He also admits shooting at Booise’s friend Roslin Kaaiman.
Kaaiman testified that she, Booise, her family, and friends were walking around the town, taking photographs. Smit stopped his vehicle on the road a short distance away from Booise.
After he called her over several times, Kaaiman said, Booise went over to talk to him. She said she watched Smit pull Booise’s face into the car and she said to herself “enough is enough” and marched over the road to confront him.
“I told him that he should allow Natasha some time with her family. I told him he was arrogant,” Kaaiman said. As she and Booise walked away, Smit fired one shot downwards and then another at Natasha.
She fell to the ground. Kaaiman ran towards a garage for shelter, but Smit drove after her shouting: “I will shoot you dead!” she said. She ran in and asked the garage shop worker to call the police. “She [the garage shop worker] said we have already called them,” Kaiiman testified.
The trial was well-attended, with Booise’s family in the gallery, supported by the EFF in Piketberg and Billy Claasen of the Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation.
Booise was described by family and friends as well-loved in the community and a favourite among locals at Shoprite, where she was a supervisor. Smit was a court orderly in the town’s magistrate’s court. He was off-duty when he shot Natasha using his service pistol.
Smit then drove away, and when Kaaiman walked out to approach Booise, she heard her friend gurgle and then someone said Booise had died.
An earlier witness, Wilne Titus, said Smit had picked her and her friend up while he was driving. They were in the car when he called Booise and then stopped to buy airtime to call her again.
Titus said that when Booise saw Smit’s car parked along the road near her, she walked to him and spoke gently to him saying: “Please allow me this time with my family.” However, he shot her in the back as she was walking away.
Titus said she was frozen with shock. Smit dropped them off up the road and Titus said she walked back to where Booise lay to tell those who had gathered at the scene that she did not have anything to do with the shooting.
