Windhoek
State prosecutor Innocencia Nyoni on Wednesday closed the State’s case after forensic scientist Maryn Swart of the Namibia Forensic and Scientific Institute gave evidence on a report she compiled on DNA samples.
According to her, the analysis she did on swabs taken from the victims was “inconclusive” as she could only extract a mixed DNA sample.
However, she said that the sample taken from the vulva of the female rape victim did contain traces of the DNA of Charles Namiseb while a T-shirt belonging to Namiseb contained DNA traces of the male victim.
Namiseb and his co-accused Edwin Tourob are charged with assaulting and robbing an elderly couple at the sleepy town of Uis in the Erongo Region on October 3, 2010 and also raping the 69-year-old woman.
The victims cannot be identified to protect the identity of the rape victim.
After Swart read the findings of her report into the record, Nyoni closed the State’s case.
Defence counsel Bronell Uirab who represents Namiseb on the instructions of legal aid informed Judge Alfred Siboleka that Namiseb will make use of his right to remain silent and will not testify in his own defence.
Tourob then took the stand and under questioning from his state-funded counsel, Christian Nambahu, told the court how he was arrested.
According to him, the day before his arrest he was at Uis where he was looking for a lift to Khorixas and was offered a lift by two men in a Toyota Corolla.
The elderly couple was robbed of a Toyota Corolla.
While they were driving, they came upon a police roadblock and stopped and another car passed them and stopped in front of them, he said.
However, he said, when the vehicle passed them, the driver of the car he was in suddenly drove off and when he asked him why he was driving when the police stopped them he was ignored.
It was then that he grabbed the steering wheel of the car and also managed to pull up the handbrake, which caused the car to veer off the road and crash into a sandbank, Tourob narrated.
He further said the driver and his passenger then got out of the car and ran away, with him giving chase.
“I wanted to catch him and hand him over to the police,” Tourob told the court, adding that he caught up with the driver at a fence next to the road and grabbed hold of his shirt, but the driver managed to free himself and ran off, according to him.
When he climbed through the fence, he tried to follow the driver, but could not get up from the ground where he fell, he said.
After another failed attempt to get up he realised he was shot and he then lost consciousness, Tourob said.
According to him, when he woke up the next morning he heard dogs barking and voices and decided to get help and when he reached the people he had heard talking he informed them what happened and he asked them to call the police.
That was when he was arrested and taken to Khorixas, Tourob concluded.
He further said on enquiry from his lawyer that after his arrest he was beaten by the police and searched, but none of the stolen goods was found on him.
Tourob will be cross-examined today by defence counsel Uirab, followed by prosecutor Nyoni. They remain in custody.