Cape Town lawyer accused of racially motivated attack takes the stand
Gary Trappler says he’s a “nosy neighbour”, not a tyre slasher
Cape Town lawyer Gary Trappler, accused of a racially motivated attack, leaves the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court. Archive photo: Sandiso Phaliso.
After failing to have the case against him struck off the roll last month, Cape Town lawyer Gary Trappler was on Wednesday called to the stand.
Trappler is charged with malicious damage to property for an apparently racially motivated attack against his neighbour.
Appearing in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court, Trappler, who has pleaded not guilty, motivated why he approached his neighbour Thandi Mgwaba’s car three times on the evening of 19 February 2020. This was the same night her car tyres were slashed.
Trappler told magistrate Benge Qula he had approached the car because it was parked skew, and he decided to write a note and place it on the windscreen.
He said he had done so after another Green Point resident, Stan Lorg, had told him the car’s tyres were flat. Trappler said he checked the tyres, which were flat, after he placed the note.
Trappler said the first time he went to the car was when he noticed the car was parked incorrectly, placed the note on the windscreen and checked the tyres. He then went back to edit his note. When he went back the last time, Mgwaba saw him and confronted him after she saw that her tyres had been slashed.
CCTV footage showed that Trappler went to the car four times. State prosecutor Sikho Mkonto told Trappler he seemed to have forgotten one of his visits to the car. Trappler responded that the third time was after his wife had also alerted him to the deflated tyres. When Mkonto asked him what he did when he went back the fourth time, Trappler said: “I don’t recall.”
Asked why he would go to the car four times, Trappler said: “I might be an overly nosy neighbour.”
Hitman?
Trappler had also been at the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for a separate case. This one he had brought based on his claim that Mgwaba had hired a hitman to kill him. Trappler said he received a message late last year from a man, Sithembile April, telling him Mgwaba had hired three people from East London to kill him and his advocate.
However, the case was postponed as April, who had been charged with defeating the ends of justice, failed to arrive at the court in time.
April has claimed to have intimate knowledge of several assassinations or alleged assassination attempts, including those on Eastern Cape Development Corporation CEO Ndzondelelo Dlulane, Judge Patricia Goliath, and British surgeon Kar Hao Teoh. GroundUp reporters once interviewed April and reached the conclusion he is a fabulist.
Reporting on the hitman court case by GroundUp Editors.
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