RECALLING the day in October 2016 when she found the body of Janet Scott lying next to Graham Gregorowski – the man accused of killing her – on the bed in his cottage in Shongweni, proved to be almost to much for a witness in Durban’s High court yesterday.
Anja Lotriet told the court she had gone to the cottage, which is located on the same property where she lived, after Gregorowki’s mother had called her.
An emotional Lotriet had to wipe away tears as she recalled the scene.
One could hear a pin drop in the courtroom while the woman described the events leading up to her shocking discovery.
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The court’s gallery was empty except for the brother of the deceased, the mother of the accused and a reporter from the Highway Mail.
The witness faltered briefly and seemed unable to continue for a moment, but managed to carry on after being given a tissue, refusing the offer of a drink of water and moment to compose herself.
Before describing the deceased, Lotriet explained that she had accessed his cottage by using a key just inside the property and unlocked a security gate to let herself in after calling and getting no response.
Lying back-to-back
Pressed for more details about how she found the deceased, she described how the couple were both on the bed.
“They were lying back-to-back on the bed basically,” she managed to answer after a few moments.
“He was facing the window and she was facing the cupboard,” she explained.
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Lotriet, despite recounting events which took place over three years ago, remained visibly shaken by the recollection of events and said she didn’t feel able to touch the dead woman to see if she was still alive.
“I couldn’t touch her to take a pulse,” she said when asked by the prosecutor whether she could tell if Scott was alive.
Knife
After her discovery of the couple, Lotriet said she then confronted the accused.
“I went around the bed towards the accused and I asked him what he had done,” she continued.
“He responded, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I have done,’ and I noticed that he had a knife and was trying to cut his wrists,” continued the witness.
“I proceeded to take the knife and walked out of the bedroom and put the knife on the kitchen table,” she said.
Asked by state prosecutor, Advocate Krishen Shah, what happened next, the witness described how the accused had followed her out of the room.
“He took a knife out of the table and proceeded into the bathroom,” she said. “I left him to go to the bathroom and went outside.”
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Asked by Shah why she hadn’t stopped him from going into the bathroom she answered quietly, “I don’t know.”
The witness then recounted how she had called for help.
“I phoned Mrs Buys, the neighbour, and asked them to come and help me,” she said adding that she had stayed outside and the police were also called at some point to come out.
“Spaced out”
The witness also described how she asked the accused to sit down on a chair on the veranda. Asked how she would describe the man she had previously described in a statement as “spaced out”, the woman said his speech was “normal and understandable.”
“I’d go so far as to say his reply to me was a shocked, quiet reply,” she confirmed later to a question from Shah.
Asked to describe how he had been sitting, she said he sat with his shoulders forward, looking down.
Asked if she thought he knew who she was, she said, “He glanced at me and looked up and I could tell he knew who I was,” she affirmed.
“At the time he looked spaced out, he wasn’t his normal self. I assumed it was shock and maybe he was recovering from drinking,” she said. “I don’t drink myself so I wouldn’t know, but he wasn’t all there,” she said.
The judge then asked if he had asked her how she had got there to which she replied simply, “no.”
Asked later by Gregorowski’s counsel, Adv Trish Moonsamy, if it was possible that the expression she saw was one of being traumatised or disbelief of his current position, the witness said she felt her description had already suggested all that.
“You are just using words to say what I did,” she told the court in reply to Moonsamy’s cross examination.
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“You received a call from the accused’s mum, did you know her?” asked the judge at one point.
“We knew each other from various places, but we were not what one might call friends,” said the witness.
Defense
Moonsamy, after some consultation with the accused asked the witness if she had seen the private investigator, Brad Nathanson, at the scene speaking to the accused, to which the witness answered that she wasn’t sure.
Moonsamy also noted that she had been asked by Gregorowski to clear up a variation on some dates when he had lived there.
Gregorowski has been through no less than three different teams of attorneys to conduct his defense with the counsel appearing for him at the beginning of the High Court trial last week having been dismissed on Monday.
The case, which has seen multiple delays this week due to load-shedding, continues today (Friday, 13 March) at 10am.
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