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INSERT: Joshlin Smith was six years old when she disappeared a year ago. Her mother, Kelly Smith, has been charged with kidnapping and human-trafficking. Pictures: Facebook and Gallo Images/ Brenton Geach
The kidnapping and human trafficking trial into the disappearance of little Joshlin Smith continued on Tuesday with the Western Cape High Court’s sitting at the White City Multipurpose Centre in Saldanha Bay.
The headline-grabbing trial is unfolding while police are still searching for the seven-year-old girl who vanished without a trace more than a year ago on 19 February 2024 from the Middelpos informal settlement in Diazville, near Saldanha Bay.
On Monday, Joshlin’s mother, Racquel “Kelly” Smith, her boyfriend, Jacquin “Boeta” Appollis and Stevano van Rhyn pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and human trafficking charges related to the disappearance of the girl.
Court proceedings resumed on Tuesday morning with the cross-examination of the state’s first witness, Constable Yanga Gongotha.
In his testimony, Gongotha provided a detailed account of the various locations he and Constable Luzuko Kobese covered in their search for Joshlin and Appollis on the evening of 19 February.
Smith has claimed previously that she left her daughter in the care of her boyfriend in the morning because she had landed an odd domestic job for the day and the little girl was unwell.
According to her, both Joshlin and Appollis were nowhere to be found when she returned late in the afternoon.
Gongotha on Monday testified Smith was with a Xhosa woman when she flagged them down in Middelpos with the news that her then six-year-old daughter had disappeared along with Appollis.
In his testimony, he told the court that it was strange that Joshlin’s mother did not appear to be in distress over her missing child.
“As we were walking, she did not appear to look worried about her missing child,” the police constable told the court on Monday.
“The most important thing for her was the boyfriend, not the child. She showed no emotion. She spoke more about the boyfriend than the child”.
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On Tuesday, the legal representative of Appollis and Van Rhyn, Advocate Fanie Harmse, told the court there seem to be some contradictory statements in Gongotha’s affidavit.
Gongotha testified on Monday that he and his colleague found Appollis in a shack in the backyard of a house in Talmakkiessingel, in Diazville, that evening.
According to Gongotha, he was sitting there with other people “smoking drugs”.
Following Joshlin’s disappearance last year, Smith and Appollis both confessed to being tik (crystal meth) users.
On Tuesday, Appollis refuted the claim that the police found him at the shack in Talmakkiessingel.
He further denied that Smith ever told the police that he had to fill up a gas canister that afternoon or that the two of them communicated that afternoon.
Smith also rejected Gongotha’s testimony on Tuesday.
Advocate Rinesh Sivnarain, her legal representative, argued in court that Smith’s defence was that she met the police on the night of Joshlin’s disappearance at the house of a boy where Joshlin was allegedly playing when she was last seen.
He further argued that the loud music Gongotha referred to in his testimony on Monday was coming from a taxi and not from the house, which the police officer claims Smith and the other woman exited.
The taxi apparently belongs to the owner of the house where Smith and the police met.
According to Joshlin’s mother, the taxi owner was entertaining some friends, and they were playing loud music.
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Sivnarain further argued that his client was accompanied by two people and not just one person when she approached the police officers for help.
She will also argue that she never asked Appollis to fill up a gas cylinder and immediately asked him where Joshlin was when she saw him.
In taking to the court’s makeshift stand on Tuesday, Constable Kobese’s testimony, however, confirmed that of his colleague.
He told the court that Smith gave different versions of her day when she was probed about her daughter, pointing out that she allegedly said that she went back home at about lunchtime to check whether Appollis had taken the gas canister to be filled up.
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