Mom fighting to uncover son's fatal collision with VIP unit
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Kyle Harris was killed when his car was hit by a police car in a convoy escorting a SA Reserve Bank (SARB) vehicle through an intersection along Hendrik Potgieter drive on Thursday 12 June 2008. Eyewitnesses said the convoy had run a red traffic light.
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Somebody has to pay' for son's fatal collision with VIP unit
Michelle Harris remembers clearly arriving at the accident scene - one car on its roof and the other smashed, unrecognisable, glass strewn across the usually busy intersection.
But the scene that plays out in her head every day is the one where she sees a man lying in the road.
His motionless body is covered with foil, his takkies poking out from underneath a blanket.
On closer inspection she sees it's her worst nightmare come true. It is her handsome and bright young son Kyle (20).
He is dead.
All Harris and her family want is closure from that fateful morning last June, but they have received everything but.
The court case involving Constable Johannes Ramalope from the police's VIP Unit - on trial for culpable homicide in the Roodepoort Magistrate's Court - has dragged on for nearly 18 months.
But Michelle isn't giving up. The 42-year-old Florida mother has quit two jobs, determined to investigate the case herself.
"I couldn't trust the police to do their jobs. I needed to know what happened that day and I wasn't getting any answers from the police.
"It was difficult from that first day because they were investigating one of their own."
On the morning of June 12, Kyle drove his sister Maxcene to college. He would usually be back home by 9am. When he didn't arrive at 9.10am, Michelle started to worry.
"He was going to be late for work, but that's not why I started to get anxious. I knew something was wrong."
When her brother-in-law arrived to fetch Kyle for work, the pair went looking for the young man. They drove and eventually stopped while approaching the Hendrik Potgieter and Jim Fouché intersection in Roodepoort.
"There was a traffic jam, we were stuck. But then I heard the sirens and I started to get butterflies in my stomach.
"I told my brother-in-law that I was going to where the sirens were. So I got out and started running. As I came closer, I saw ambulances and, immediately after, I saw Kyle's car."
After she had identified her son's body, police told her that a car in a VIP convoy had collided head-on with her son's. They said the convoy had been transporting Chinese diplomats to Pretoria.
The occupants of the other car, which lay on its roof, had been taken to hospital.
"Our lives changed that day. And nothing has changed since. I have made it my life's mission to see that the person responsible for my son's death is brought to book. Somebody has to pay, I don't care who."
The court case was a comedy of errors, she says. It was postponed several times because investigators had failed to complete their investigations timeously. And at one point the docket "mysteriously" went missing.
But Michelle refuses to accept officials' "incompetence".
So she resigned from her job as a private banker at Nedbank, then as a sales manager at another company, so that she could focus on the investigation into her son's death.
Michelle says she visited the scene a week after the accident, spoke to the driver of the tow truck, and gave details of witnesses to the police.
This was after she went on radio and pleaded for witnesses to come forward, which they did.
Harris also twice visited Assistant Commissioner Oswald Reddy, area commander of the greater Roodepoort area, to beg for help.
The case was in court this week.
Ramalope's colleague, Inspector Bernard Clifton, testified that the driver had been doing more than 100km/h at the time of the collision.
Clifton testified that he was driving with Ramalope in a Ford Territory as part of a police convoy that, among others, had been escorting a Reserve Bank truck from Bloemfontein to Pretoria.
Earlier, Captain Hendrik Willem Stölm, the commander of the convoy, testified that the vehicles in the convoy were driving along Hendrik Potgieter Avenue to get to the N14 highway before slow traffic on the N1 highway could pose a security risk.
Clifton, meanwhile, claimed that Harris had moved from behind two rows of stationary vehicles in Jim Fouché Drive, across the intersection, and passed a marked VIP police car, which was parked in the middle of the road to block off traffic, before hitting the Ford Territory that was moving down Hendrik Potgieter, on the right front side.
But State prosecutor Mardie Human disagreed.
She said that due to the traffic islands regulating the flow of traffic, it would have been technically impossible for Harris to move past so many vehicles. Later Clifton admitted he was not familiar with the area.
The magistrate, prosecutor and defence team were supposed to do an in-loco inspection, but a hailstorm in the Roodepoort area hampered plans to point out markers at the scene of the accident. The inspection will now take place on November 30.
Michelle, who described her son as a humble, happy and intelligent young man, is determined to have her son's reputation reinstated.
"They are making him out to be some kind of psycho on the road. It hurts us so much. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't push ahead, forcing people to do their jobs.
"Kyle was loved and the world loved Kyle. He would always go to the ends of the earth for those who needed his help."
Since Kyle's death, Michelle, her husband Clive and daughter Maxcene's lives have changed dramatically. They were an active group - always outdoors and enjoying music, movies and karaoke nights. But, mostly, the family fun has ended.
"My family need to move on with their lives, we desperately want to. But we're still stuck with the court case hanging over our heads," says Michelle.
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Labels: SA ROAD DEATHS, SAPS, VIP PROTECTION UNIT
