Forensic expert alleges cops bungled Kenny Kunene’s shooting case

Forensic expert David Klatzow has questioned why, after Kenny Kunene reported that the car he was driving in was shot at multiple times, the police allowed a towing company to take it to an auto repairer in Sandton – apparently before they could complete their investigation.

“The moment the police knew there was a shooting, they should have impounded the car. When the car was towed away, the police immediately lost a crucial piece of evidence,” Klatzow told The Citizen.

He is the same investigator who discovered the police had engaged in highly questionable behaviour and alleged destruction of evidence after the shooting of Brett Kebble in 2005.

Klatzow was contracted by Kunene to further investigate the matter earlier this week.

Klatzow said that what was particularly worrisome was that after he discovered an automatic rifle bullet in the tyre and seven bullet holes in the car, was that the police themselves had missed the bullets, and this would “severely affect the case”.

The investigator had taken the car apart to investigate the evidence more carefully, discovering much that the police had missed.

Klatzow further told The Citizen that the police investigations were now “extremely compromised because suspects could easily claim that “they fired 10 shots in the air”.

He said that as soon as the car was towed away, “the police lost a chain of evidence”. He added that the SAPS had a case to answer as they had displayed negligence in his view.

Speaking to Eyewitness News’ Barry Bateman, police spokesperson Mathapelo Peters was quoted as saying the car was processed and returned to the owner.

READ MORE: Kenny Kunene shot at while driving in Johannesburg

In a call with The Citizen on Friday, Kunene himself remained convinced that whoever had shot at him had had a motive other than hijacking. He said on Tuesday that at around 8pm when the incident happened, he remained at the spot where the incident occurred until 1am the next morning, and eventually left.

“At around two in the morning, I received a call from the police provincial special team saying they will look after the car. I said they must tell us where they are taking the car. In the morning I called to find out if everything was fine; later in the day, the owner told me the car was at Sandton Auto Repair.

“I was expecting the car to be impounded. Instead, it was at a repair shop. They inspected the car with their eyes and said they had processed it.

“I do have an idea of what is at play. I cannot confirm it, but all I can say is that I have never been the subject of a hit before. I don’t have any business deals with anybody and this comes at a time after Steve Motale received death threats,” said Kunene.

Kunene believes it is not a coincidence that this happened after his online platform Weekly Xposé ran a story about Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s alleged dalliances with various women. He alleged there had been vitriol directed at him from journalists as soon as the story broke. He named various journalists and a website in particular.

“One cannot rule out that possibility that whoever is behind this [attempted hit] is afraid of the material and assumes that I still have the material [information]; especially looking at the effort that the deputy president made to squash the story; this was not a hijacking.

“We [Weekly Xposé] are still going to carry the story, giving more details about the relationship Ramaphosa had with the doctor. I don’t have the emails, but my reporters have it. I am not writing the story myself. But I am not going to stop them,” he added.

Brigadier Peters asked The Citizen for questions in writing as she still needed to consult with the Norwood police station, where the a case was opened, to obtain more details.

She later responded by saying: “We are satisfied that all necessary processes were followed in terms of crime scene management.”

In answer to why the car was sent to the repair shop, she added that the car was “released to the owner/complainant as soon as the processing of the crime scene was concluded”.

http://https://www.citizen.co.za/news/news-eish/twitter-thinks-kenny-kunene-hit-was-staged/

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