A multi-million rand civil claim against the Minister of Police took an unexpected turn when the SA Police Service admitted 'negligence' in the death of a 10-year-old Uitenhage girl who was shot during a violent housing protest in Kamesh in Uitenhage.
Maricha Speelman was walking home from the shops with her sister on 14 November, 2014, when she was shot in the head.
She died in hospital the following day.
Her family then instituted a civil claim against the SAPS in the hope of getting "answers" and seeking "justice".
At the time, police insisted that only rubber bullets were used in trying to control the protest, but the family's ballistics expert made a different finding.
According to the report compiled by ballistic expert and former policeman, Jacobus Steyl, which is now part of the court record, the wound Maricha sustained "was not consistent with a 12-gauge rubber bullet" but "was most likely a result of a standard 9mm firearm".
In his report, Steyl said that he had studied the victim's medical records and found that she had sustained a gunshot wound from "the front side of the skull with an accompanying exit wound on the back of the skull."
He further added that at a distance from where the shot was fired, a rubber bullet would not have resulted in an exit wound.
Steyl said according to his calculations, Marischa was shot from a distance of between 35 to 40m away and he said for a rubber bullet to cause a fatal injury it would have to have been fired at a close range of at least 1.1m to 2.2m away from the victim.
During a pre-trial conference on Tuesday the SAPS, via its legal counsel, conceded that Marischa had in fact been killed by a live round.
Speaking to Algoa FM News at court proceedings on Wednesday, Marischa's 17-year-old sister Shantelle, said that "the policeman (at this point unknown) who fired the shot stole her life and should be punished."
Shantelle also wrote a heart-wrenching letter to her sister, whom she affectionately called Lolo, in which she asks why it had to be her?. n the letter she also asks Maricha "if she can remember the good times they had together and how they used to talk about their dreams?".
The Speelman family lawyer, Wilma Espag van der Bank, said Shantelle and both her parents suffer from emotional shock and trauma and have since been diagnosed with "major depressive disorder''.
Van der Bank said she and her team, Advocate Pieter Mouton and Nicola Barnard, were now moving to the second phase of the matter in which they are claiming damages of R5m from the Minister of Police.
Discussions in this regard are expected to continue on Thursday.
