GRASKOP – On July 4, 2013 Ms Michelle Curgenven (38) was shot and killed in an incident which shook the Lowveld and left her family devastated.
On Friday Johan Heunis (60) received a suspended sentence after being found guilty of culpable homicide, leaving her family with more questions than answers.
Heunis was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years, and was declared unfit to possess a firearm.
The outcome of the trial will be appealed by the state.
Curgenven was fatally wounded when a bullet hit her while she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her vehicle, in the garage of her home in the Tussenberge complex in Steiltes.
Heunis was in the front passenger seat prior to the fatal shot being discharged.
Heunis told the court that he had the pistol under his chin and wanted to commit suicide. According to him, Curgenven tried to push the firearm away when a single shot went off and hit her.
Curgenven’s sister, Ms Diana Loock, wrote a heart-wrenching letter to her sister in which she compared the case to that of Ms Reeva Steenkamp, who was murdered by boyfriend Oscar Pistorius on Valentine’s Day earlier that year. She pleaded that the Lowveld community should stand together and demand justice for Curgenven.
Heunis, who holds a senior management position at Mbombela traffic department’ s legal division will not go to jail, provided he is not found guilty of the same offence during the next five years.
Should he be convicted again during this time, he will have to go to prison for eight years.
His legal team, which consisted of attorney, Mr Coert Jordaan, and advocate, Mr Piet Pistorius, maintained that Heunis did not intentionally fire the shot that killed Curgenven.
Heunis’ explanation of her last day was presented to court in a plea explanation in April last year.
In the 22-page document, Heunis pleaded guilty to committing culpable homicide. He admitted that he had romantic feelings for Curgenven, which she seemed to have reciprocated at times.
However, when he bought her a trinket for Mother’s Day, she returned it and said they could not be in a relationship.
He said on July 4 that year, Curgenven invited him to her home and began to discuss their relationship. Heunis, who felt uncertain regarding how she felt about him, reacted emotionally. He went to fetch his service pistol and wanted to commit suicide.
He sat down in the passenger seat of Curgenven’s vehicle and held the pistol against his chin.
He explained that she tried to persuade him not to kill himself. “The gun went off,” said his legal team. Curgenven was dead.
Heunis was in a state of shock and averred that he had only “sporadic” memory of what happened during the rest of the day. He woke up on the kitchen floor and had a terrible headache, which he tried to cure with eight painkillers. He then proceeded to Curgenven’s bar, where he helped himself to some rum and tequila.
The first person Heunis contacted was Mr Eddie Prollius, who was Mbombela’s traffic chief at the time. Heunis could not recall the content of the conversation, but Prollius testified that he had uttered the words, “Chief, ek het k** aangejaag”.
The police and security companies rushed to the scene where they found Heunis in a suicidal state. He repeatedly threatened to shoot himself. After persuading him not to do so, they gained access to the house and Heunis was arrested.
He was charged with murder in the Circuit High Court in Mbombela.
As part of the state’s case, senior state advocate, Mr Johan Coetzee, called ballistic expert Mr Christiaan Mangena to testify. Mangena testified that the gun’s barrel was between two and three millimetres from Curgenven’s body when she was shot.
“A straight line can be drawn between the entrance and exit wounds and the spot where the bullet hit the vehicle,” he added.
Her left arm had been hanging downwards when she was shot. During questioning Mangena said Curvengen was probably looking straight ahead when she was shot and that she was not turned towards the passenger seat.
While under cross-examination by Pistorius, Mangena was asked whether he could be certain that the bullet that killed Curgenven, was fired deliberately. He said that he could not.
After the judge, Mr Peter Mabuse passed the suspended sentence on Tuesday, Curgenven’s friends and family were visibly shocked.
During a court break, her sister, Loock expressed her feelings as “hopeless”.
“It’s like feeling nothing. You just feel so disappointed and betrayed by the law,” she said. Curgenven’s mother, Ms Diana Meyer, kept shaking her head, repeatedly asking, “Will this man not spend one single night in prison? Could it be?
“It’s been tough since her death, We’ve gone through so much. And now this,” explained family friend, Ms Sharon Joubert.
Coetzee immediately requested leave to appeal and motivated it by saying that Heunis’ plea explanation was incomplete. He said it should not have carried the weight of evidence delivered under oath, as Heunis had never testified, nor had he been cross-examined on the contents of his plea explanation.
The constitution, however, clearly bars the court from drawing negative inferences from the accused’s choice not to testify.
With regard to the testimony given by Mangena, Coetzee argued that it had been unreasonable of Pistorius to question an expert witness on the accused’s guilt in the way that Pistorius had done so.
Coetzee questioned whether Heunis’ version of events should have been regarded as “reasonably possibly true”.
Mabuse granted leave for the case to be placed on appeal by the state.
When Heunis left the court building, he addressed Lowvelder for the first time since he was charged more than two years ago.
“What had happened, was a terrible thing. I feel the deepest sympathy for her family. At the same time, this trial had been really difficult for me,” he said.
His former wife, Ms Esmé Heunis, asked Lowvelders to consider Heunis and his family and friends’ feelings and to keep them in mind before making comments on what had happened:
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