He specifically focused on his successful prosecution of the Luke Tibbetts murder.
Van Wyk was also responsible for the prosecution of other high profile cases, such as Lester Abrahams, who was found guilty of murdering his parents.
According to van Wyk, as a prosecutor, he has to navigate between instability and the principals of the law.
That navigation must lead him to the truth.
“There is only one truth, so it’s my function to assist the court to get to that truth,” he explained.
“Only when you get to the truth can you say: ‘Justice has been done’.”
As a prosecutor, he added, you become a jack-of-all-trades, yet master of none. He has also become proficient in a variety of ”languages”, with the most useful of these being police jargon.
“It’s a very efficient sort of language, with extra-ordinary grammar and vocabulary; I prefer using police language when I prepare my case,” he said.
“I take instructions only from my clients. I owe them the truth and I owe them the best. Their families and taxpayers are my ‘employers’.”
The Luke Tibbets case (three-year-old killed in shooting in Westbury, August 2014)
Van Wyk was about to prosecute the accused, Lindray Khaku, for the murder of another gangster, with the name of Alton Mooi, in 2013, when little Luke was shot.
Mooi’s case was enrolled in July in the High Court, but was postponed until August 21, 2014, for purposes of trial. While the accused, Khaku, was out on bail, he shot and killed Luke that same year.
Tibbetts was, sadly, caught in the crossfire while sitting on his mother’s lap in a car, when Khakhu shot at Keenan Mokwena, who was travelling in another car.
Mokwena was wounded, but Tibbetts died in hospital six days later.
In preparing the Mooi case, van Wyk and his team were fortunate to have surveillance footage that originated from G-Spot moments before Mooi was shot dead.
The footage shows an altercation between Khaku and Mooi, which led to a shooting just around the corner of the establishment.
Prosecuting was made difficult, as there was no clear identification of Khaku’s facial features in the footage.
Then the Luke Tibbetts murder happened while Khaku was out on bail.
Van Wyk again obtained video footage (also outside G-Spot) of Khaku on the day that Tibbetts was killed.
He eventually used all the video footage obtained from the two shootings to link and identify Khaku as the person responsible for both murders.
Van Wyk also used Khakhu’s social media profile to identify him as the man on the video footage during the time of the Mooi shooting.
“I focused on Khaku’s dress code when making the match to the video footage; he liked brand clothes. The cap would match the shirt, the shirt the pants and the pants would match the shoes.”
Van Wyk examined a particular Facebook photo of Khaku he had posted on February 2015 (the Luke Tibbetts trial commenced March 2, 2015).
“In this photo he was wearing the exact clothes he had on the night he shot Mooi dead – blue shoes with black soles and a ring on the right hand, among others,” he said.
* On Friday, March 27, Khakhu was found guilty of killing Tibbetts in a judgment by the High Court of Johannesburg, sitting in Palm Ridge. He was also found guilty of the murder of Mooi. – @IschkeBoksburg
