Court cases suspended after St Albans detainee tests positive

All court cases across the Nelson Mandela Bay lower and higher courts where the accused are being held at the St Albans Correctional Facility remand centre will not go ahead for at least two days.

This after one of the detainees tested positive for Covid-19.

A directive was sent out on Monday by the prisons management informing stakeholders of the situation.

Cases including that of two men accused of the April 29 2017 murder of a Jefferys Bay man were postponed on Monday to July 2.

Remeo Booysen, 21, and Renaldo Kamoetoe, 27, face charges of murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances after they allegedly attacked Jonathan Zane Hayward, 29, outside Club Beachfront in Jeffreys Bay.

Hayward’s badly beaten body was found later that day about 90m from Club Beachfront near a bottle store in Pellsrus.

Booysen and Kamoetoe were arrested the next day.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

It is still unclear if the sentencing proceedings of a Port Elizabeth doctor found guilty of shooting his estranged wife in the face would continue on Wednesday after the matter was previously postponed due to staff at the New Law Courts in North End testing positive for Covid-19.

Mkhuseli Boto, 50, was found guilty in May of shooting his wife, Tabita, 36, on August 31 2019 at their Brighton Drive, Summerstrand, home.

Tabita survived and has since moved to East London.

Boto was arrested nine days after the shooting after recovering in hospital from an alleged suicide attempt.

In the directive issued on Monday by the management of the remand detention facility, it was advised that court appearances would be temporarily suspended to ensure the safety of court, SAPS and correctional services officials, as well as  offenders at large.

As soon as the test results of all offenders who had been in contact with the person who tested positive were received from the laboratory, the head of the centre would announce the next steps, the directive said.