NELSPRUIT – The man accused of allegedly stabbing his ex-girlfriend with a syringe filled with his own blood refuted the testimony of the state’s witnesses against him on Monday.
Mr Lismore Basson’s trial started in the Regional Court this week. Basson supposedly stabbed Ms Iris da Silva in her arm with the syringe at her workplace on February 1. He pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault.
Da Silva testified that Basson met her at her car at Makro that morning. “He told me if he could not have me no one could,” she said. “He then took out an injection filled with blood and injected me once. He tried to do it a second time but I pulled away and he said he was giving me Aids.”
It was put to Da Silva that her testimony contradicted her statement to the police, wherein she said he had stabbed her twice. She insisted that the accused had tried to do it twice.
On the morning of the trial, the prosecutor, Mr Danie Sibiya, dismissed the three state witnesses, because not one of them had seen the alleged physical assault first-hand. The witnesses
were then called back after lunch.
Mr Jacques Meiring, operational head of Bossies Community Justice, testified that he was alerted about the incident by a colleague of Da Silva, Mr Rudi Smith. They tracked the vehicle Basson had left the scene in to Mr Corné du Toit.
Meiring phoned Du Toit, who told him that the accused was at the Wimpy in Ferreira Street. Meiring then confronted Basson. “He said it was his own blood and it was only to make her sweat a little,” said Meiring. “Basson said he threw it (the syringe) out of the bakkie when they left Makro.”
Smith testified that he had accompanied Meiring to Wimpy. “The accused confessed to us that he had injected her with his own blood,” he said.
Du Toit stated that he gave Basson a lift to Makro to deliver some documents to Da Silva that morning. “On the way back from Makro I saw the accused throwing something out of
the window. I asked him what he had done. He replied that I shouldn’t worry about it. I replied that I should because I couldn’t be implicated in a crime,” he said. “I dropped him
off in town and immediately went to the police.”
Magistrate Mr NK Makhaya denied the defence’s application to have the charges dismissed. Basson then testified that he went to see Da Silva as there was a number of unresolved
issues between them. According to him, he had left his document folder in the vehicle and sat on it. When he opened it, he saw he had broken a pen in the file and threw it out the window.
“It wasn’t a syringe. What would I be doing with it?” stated Basson. He admitted that Da Silva had a protection order against him at the time of the alleged attack. When asked by Sibiya why all the witnesses would have made up the story, Basson answered, “I think everybody had their own version. There are three sides to a story, yours, mine and
the truth.”
The parties are to present their final arguments on Thursday.
