Jeffreys Bay club murder accused linked to stabbing

The owner of a Jeffreys Bay nightclub where a 29-year-old man was assaulted before being brutally murdered positively identified one of the alleged assailants as the man who had stabbed one of her staff members a year earlier.

Testifying in the Port Elizabeth High Court on Tuesday, nightclub owner Wendy Rockman said on the night of April 28 2017 she had seen Renaldo Kamoetoe, 27, and Remeo Booysen, 21, in the foyer of the establishment moments before the assault and murder of Jonathan Zane Hayward.

She subsequently instructed them to leave.

"I still spoke to [Booysen] and I said, 'you know that you are banned from here and not allowed access to this place'," Rockman said.

She said the pair had been regulars at the Club Beachfront establishment but had been banned after Kamoetoe allegedly stabbed one of her staff members a year before.

"I left [the foyer] to go to attend to my other duties and that's probably when they got in," Rockman said.

Rockman, who owns the club along with her husband Ian, said they had 32 CCTV cameras set up in and around the premises, which they had owned for the past 20 years.

On the day after the murder, Hayward's badly beaten body was discovered by a passerby between a bottle store and a place of safety in Dolphin Street, Pellsrus.

Rockman said her husband had told her that Hayward's father had called him and asked the Rockmans to assist by giving police access to the video footage from the night before.

She said her husband had told her Hayward was allegedly murdered inside the club.

"A detective arrived that morning and we viewed the footage. [The detective] asked if he could download the footage.

"I showed the police where [Hayward] was [in the footage]. I spoke to [Hayward] on that night at the bar.

"[The detective] wanted footage of the club – he wasn't there [the night before] and doesn't know the club [so] I showed him where [Hayward] was," Rockman said.

Footage of Hayward's movements on the night in question showed him leaving the club, returning, drinking with Kamoetoe and Booysen in the outside area of the club, and being assaulted by three men outside the club.

The footage was sent to the police's forensic lab in Cape Town for analysis and for the footage to be enhanced for facial recognition purposes.

From still images gathered from the footage, and provisionally accepted by the court as evidence, Rockman positively identified Kamoetoe as one of the men in the footage.

Rockman said she did not know the names of the accused but knew their faces well.

Prior to Rockman's testimony, Warrant Officer Wesley Arendse, a forensic analyst who took the still images and enhanced the footage, told the court that there was no way the images were tampered with or edited in any way.

This was after advocate Robin O'Brien, for Kamoetoe, objected to the images being submitted as evidence unless the entire video footage was shown in court.

This prompted state advocate Garth Baartman to state that the prosecution would ensure the necessary arrangements were made to make the equipment available for the footage to be viewed in court.

Kamoetoe and Booysen face charges of murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances.

They have both pleaded not guilty. It is alleged that on the night of the killing, the men attacked Hayward outside Rockman's club, after which he was beaten and dragged about 90m, where he was beaten further and left for dead.

Previously, Dr Gregory Hanslo, who performed the postmortem on Hayward's body, testified that open fractures on the nose and skull, possibly caused by a full beer bottle, were more than likely the cause of death.

The case continues.