Eveline de Klerk

SWAKOPMUND - The accident scene in which three Germans and three Namibians were killed between Swakopmund and Henties Bay on 29 December 2014 was tampered with in the sense that the road was smoothed over with a grader, hours after the accident occurred.
This is according to Detective Warrant Officer Paula Havenga, a state witness who testified on Wednesday in the Swakopmund Regional Court in the Jandré Dippenaar murder trial that is currently underway.
Jandré Dippenaar faces six counts of murder and charges of fraud, reckless or negligent driving, and driving without a valid driver’s licence in connection with the 2014 accident in which German tourists Alexandra Joschko (19), Markus Joschko (48) and Stephanie Joschko (49), and Gobabis resident Dinah Pretorius (30), and Charlene Schoombe (24) and JC Horn (27) from Windhoek, were killed. During the proceedings, Hahenga told the court that she and another police official arrived at the accident scene while on their way back to Henties Bay from Walvis Bay, where they had taken remains of a boy killed in a car accident earlier on 29 December 2014.
She explained that they saw a FJ Cruiser (Dippenaar’s vehicle) in the middle of the road and that it was burning furiously.  “I also saw a white Ford Ranger on the left side of the road and a lot of bystanders and emergency personnel,” Havenga said. She also observed that there were still bodies in the FJ Cruiser but could not see how many as the vehicle was burning.  She says three other bodies were in the Ford Ranger.  They were all deceased.
According to Havenga, around 21h00 they again drove to the Walvis Bay mortuary with the bodies of the deceased. “We left the accident scene still as it was.  However upon our return to Henties midnight that evening, we saw that the road was already graded and the accident scene was not intact,” he said.
Havenga then told the court that she made calls to find out who instructed that the road be cleaned as the police still had to collect evidence and reconstruct the accident.
However, municipal officials informed her that it was not the Swakopmund Municipality’s jurisdiction and no equipment was used to smooth the road. She was told the employee of the Roads Contractor Company graded the road. “We also put in short metal poles with police tape around a gouge mark in the road and diverted traffic around the scene as evidence still needed to be collected. However, most of the evidence including tyre marsh I saw on the day of the fatal accident was no longer visible on the road,” she said.  The trial continues today.