One Tragic Night

by Mandy Wiener

  Fresco met Samantha Taylor through Oscar Pistorius while they were dating. The network engineer took the stand after Taylor and while he agreed with her that Oscar had fired a shot through the sunroof, there were many discrepancies in their versions.

  Fresco recounted to the court how he was driving home from the Vaal with Oscar and Taylor in the car, when he was pulled over twice – first for not having number plates on the vehicle he was driving, and then several kilometres down the road, for speeding. On both occasions, the officers issued him with fines. Fresco said the runner had his 9 mm pistol between his legs on the seat of the car, which ultimately led to the altercation with the officers on the second time they were stopped:

  After the Grasmere toll plaza and just thereafter we had been pulled over by some Metro police for speeding. At this stage the policeman had come to my window and asked for my licence and asked me to please step out of the vehicle, which I had done. He was busy asking me questions and it was taking a bit longer and shortly, shortly after that the accused had come out of the vehicle to see what was taking so long.

  He had come round to my side, the front right of the vehicle to see what was going on and shortly thereafter there was another Metro police person who had gone round to where the accused had been sitting and had picked up his gun off his seat. Then there was an altercation, a verbal altercation between the accused and the Metro police officer. The officer had picked up the accused’s weapon off the passenger seat, to which the accused had replied: ‘You cannot just touch another man’s gun.’

  Fresco explained that the officer had picked up the weapon and had ‘cleared’ it, causing the bullet that was one-up in the chamber to be ejected into the vehicle.

  Nel: So when the policeman cleared the firearm and ejected the one bullet, what happened? What did the accused do?

  Fresco: He started telling the officer: Now your fingerprints are all over my gun, so if something happens you are then going to be liable for anything that had happened.

  Nel: So now the bullet is ejected. What happened?

  Fresco: Then in the interim his licence, his firearm licence had been given to the Metro police officer to which he asked him a question: Mr Pretorius … and he said: well, actually if you could read it, it would state Mr Pistorius.

  Fresco scrambled around the car searching for the bullet and eventually found it after moving the seat. He seemed to remember Oscar putting the bullet back into the magazine of the gun.

  As a further indication of how fast Fresco had been driving, shortly after that incident, another set of metro police officers arrived on the scene, telling the men they had been chasing them since the toll plaza. They were issued with a speeding fine and allowed to continue. Fresco says Oscar was furious that someone had touched his gun:

  Fresco: I was driving, the accused was in the passenger seat. Sam Taylor was in the back of the car and then without prior warning he shot out the sunroof. Instinctively I had literally just moved over to the right-hand side of the vehicle. Once I had flinched over to the right-hand side of the vehicle, having ducked down, I had seen the weapon being brought back in, through the sunroof.

  Nel: Did you say anything?

  Fresco: Apologies for my language M’Lady, but I asked him if he is fucking mad.

  Nel: What did he say?

  Fresco: He just laughed, M’Lady. By that stage it literally felt as if my ear was bleeding. I had a constant ringing in my left ear.

  Nel: Did you enquire from him why? What was he doing, after the shot was fired?

  Fresco: He just laughed about what had just happened.

  Nel: Did you discuss this incident with him at all?

  Fresco: No, after that basically we just carried on driving.

  If true, it was remarkably reminiscent of the Tashas incident account: a gun discharged with reckless abandon and never a word spoken about it.

  While Fresco had pointed out the location of the alleged incident to Investigating Officer Mike van Aardt, he conceded under cross-examination that they did have to drive up and down four times before finding the spot he remembered. There were pictures to prove it, marked with a little blue label in file HI. Fresco told the court the incident had occurred somewhere near Modderfontein, but Taylor could not pinpoint the location.

  Like Taylor, Fresco remembered they had accompanied Oscar to a house to sort out some kind of administration related to a firearm. However, unlike Taylor, he could remember the restaurant they then went to: the Gourmet Garage at Atholl Square.

  To undermine Fresco’s credibility, Roux picked at fine details. The only things in common between Fresco and Taylor’s testimony was that they were together with Oscar, returning from the Vaal River, when the athlete apparently fired a single shot out of the sunroof. The two witnesses did not corroborate their location or the exact circumstances that led to the shot being fired.

  Taylor had told the court that Fresco and Oscar had been angry after they were pulled over by the police and that they were then joking about shooting out traffic lights. Fresco denied this, insisting that he was angry and that it was the accused who had found the incident funny.

  Fresco admitted he had received the fines and then crumpled them up and thrown them in the car. He couldn’t answer what happened to the tickets subsequently, but assumed Justin Divaris had taken care of them as the car was from his dealership.

  In his evidence-in-chief, Fresco had told the court that when returning from the Vaal, Oscar had his gun between his legs and that he had had no issue with Fresco’s speed. He also claimed that when Oscar was driving the vehicle on the way to the river, Fresco had taken a photograph of the speedometer at 200 km/h.

  But Roux was in fine form. Awkwardly for Fresco, the defence counsel produced a photograph taken by Fresco at 4:41pm – when Fresco was driving home. The speedometer read 260 km/h and it was obvious the photo had been taken when Fresco was at the wheel:

  Roux: Anything that you want to say, Mr Fresco? [No audible answer]

  Roux: I see there is silence.

  Fresco: If you have got the photo that I have sent in, then it must have been me driving at the time … [intervenes]

  Roux: Why …?

  Fresco: I do not remember this.

  Roux: No, it is more than that. It is you coming back after giving evidence the previous night and come with evidence under oath, (a), incorrectly saying who was driving the vehicle to the Vaal and (b), engineering evidence that it was in the morning.

  While the defence poked holes in Fresco’s recollection of events and created a degree of doubt about the incident, it could also be argued that Oscar’s reputation and image were tarnished by his testimony. A portrait of reckless, fastliving young men was presented to the court.

  However, it was a very different Oscar who took the stand in his own defence to answer to these firearm charges and to challenge the evidence of his former friends and girlfriend. It was his word against theirs.

  Oscar pleaded not guilty to all of the firearm-related charges and argued with Advocate Nel as to why he was innocent of these crimes. But the charges opened the door for the prosecutor to explore several examples of Oscar’s irresponsible regard for firearm safety and ultimately benefited the state in its attempt to portray the accused in that light. Had Oscar pleaded guilty, this would not have been allowed to happen.

  In his evidence-in-chief, Oscar first dealt with the alleged sunroof shooting, then moved on to the Tashas incident and finally addressed the .38 Special ammunition in his safe at home.

  The trip to the Vaal River with Taylor and Fresco was a relaxing day spent out on the water where the trio and other friends had lunch. They decided to head back to Joburg mid-afternoon because the athlete needed to catch a flight to Scotland that night for a golfing event. He confirmed that Fresco was driving the car, Taylor was sitting behind the driver and that they were stopped twice by the police, when on one occasion a police officer handled his firearm.

  Oscar explained t
hat when the police officers were questioning Fresco, he left his handgun in the car because he did not want to approach the police while he was armed. He said a policeman, in an aggressive and unprofessional manner, asked who owned the weapon before making the gun safe by ejecting the magazine and a bullet, both of which fell into the car.

  ‘I was agitated, I was angry that he had handled my firearm. After he had helped me get the round back, I think at that point he did not want to engage in a conversation anymore,’ Oscar said.

  He testified that the three of them left the scene for Divaris’s house, where they’d left their cars, and had dinner somewhere close to his house before he jetted off to Scotland. But Oscar said he did not actually remember flying out to Scotland that evening – he was told this by his legal team who checked his travel dates.

  He further disputed the two witnesses’ claims that he filled in paperwork related to firearms that night. ‘The only paperwork that I can remember doing was in October. I do not remember filing any paperwork in September. I do not remember going to a house on that day. I do not recall that.’

  And the shooting incident?

  ‘That never happened,’ said Oscar.

  John Beare was the vice chairman of the Lowveld Firearm Collectors Association who helped Oscar obtain his firearm collectors’ licence – the documentation that would facilitate his acquisition of up to 30 firearms.

  ‘Now did you not go to his place that day?’ asked Nel, referring to the meeting the two witnesses remembered him attending to sign firearm-related papers:

  Accused: I do not know, M’Lady. I do not remember going to his house on that day.

  Nel: If he has a photograph of you on that day with his daughter, did you take photographs with his daughter?

  Accused: I have … I do not know Mr Bear[e] well, but on an occasion that I have … on one of the occasions that I have met with him, I took a photo with his daughter and his wife.

  Nel: Then it is possible that you were there?

  ‘Yes, M’Lady,’ conceded the accused. Oscar could not remember the date he met Beare at his home, and he could not even remember exactly where Beare lived – so it was fair, then, that Taylor couldn’t be criticised for not remembering the exact location of this meeting either, contested Nel.

  Oscar quickly turned to attack the witnesses, Taylor in particular. There was clearly no love lost between the two.

  ‘She lied in her statement and she lied when she was up here,’ testified the accused. And yet, despite his accusatory tone, Oscar could not dispute Taylor’s statement because he conceded that he could not remember either:

  Nel: Then both of them indicate that you fired through the sunroof. That is definitely a lie?

  Accused: That is a lie, M’Lady.

  Nel: Both of them, independently will tell that lie?

  Accused: They both took the stand, they both had different stories as to why it happened, as to where it happened, as to how it happened, as to the reaction. That story was fabricated, M’Lady. It never happened. It was not the truth.

  Just two days earlier it was Taylor calling Oscar the liar. During his evidence-in-chief, which she was evidently watching, the former girlfriend tweeted: ‘Last lies you get to tell … You better make it worth your while.’ The tweet was soon deleted, but not before being retweeted hundreds of times.

  Oscar claimed Taylor and Fresco had been in contact with each other and had been seen at the same events together; he was suggesting that they had colluded with one another to frame him.

  But why didn’t Roux challenge the witnesses on this allegation when they were in the box? Oscar couldn’t say. And who told the accused about the two witnesses communicating with each other? Oscar couldn’t remember.

  Oscar agreed with Nel he should never have left his firearm in the car when he approached Fresco and the police officers after being stopped for speeding, and further agreed that the police officer in question was well within his rights to handle the firearm that had been left unattended. Nel walked the accused through the sequence of events: the officer picked up the handgun, dropped the magazine out and cleared the breach, which ejected a bullet, making the firearm safe:

  Nel: Which means? The gun, the firearm was one-up?

  Accused: That is correct.

  Nel: So you carried that gun on the boat and at the function, one-up?

  ‘I think that would be correct,’ said Oscar, before further confirming his earlier testimony that he was agitated and upset at the way the officer had handled his weapon.

  Nel questioned why Oscar would carry his firearm with him to a social get-together at the river, and even when he went on a boat. Oscar explained he carried his firearm wherever he went, and his alternative was to leave it in his car. When he swam, he wrapped it in a towel and left it on the boat – which he initially did not see as negligent, despite Nel’s insistence. Once the prosecutor suggested to the court that this was yet another example of the accused being unwilling to accept responsibility, Oscar changed his mind and agreed that leaving his firearm unattended is, in fact, negligent. This was a theme the prosecution took great pains to drive home throughout its argument: that Oscar was irresponsible, with little regard for standard safety procedures.

  ‘It was probably the scariest, scariest thing I have ever had to do in my whole life,’ says Taylor, weeks after her testimony in court. ‘You’ve got the judge and her assessors, you’ve got a prosecution team, you’ve got policemen, you’ve got lawyers, his defence team, you’ve got the ANC Women’s League, and then you’ve got someone who you loved and someone who is like a stranger to you. That’s your ex-boyfriend that’s on a trial and you have to face him and you have to face his family and his friends who were once your friends as well.’

  Taylor is aware of how she came across to the world and puts this down to being overcome by the moment. She calmed her nerves before stepping up to the witness box, but once she was sworn in she found it incredibly difficult.

  ‘Before court, you calm yourself down and you say, “Just go up and it will be fine,” and you go up there and I think you feel that you’re on trial. It was so scary.’

  She had resolved not to look at Oscar while she was on the stand but to rather keep her eyes fixed on her sister who had come along to support her.

  ‘For some reason I just couldn’t look at my sister and Oscar and I, we just … we stared at each other the whole time and I think that’s why I got so emotional because it’s such a frustrating thing to go through.’

  What did she think was going through his mind as she was testifying?

  ‘He probably thought, Why would you do this to me?’ But, she reveals, she wasn’t there by choice, as the jilted lover wanting to get her revenge on her promiscuous ex-boyfriend. ‘I was subpoenaed to court, I didn’t have a choice to go to court or not. The policemen, after the incident happened, they came to me in Cape Town and they took my statement and if they ask you a question, you’ve got to answer that question. I wasn’t there to be the vindictive girlfriend. I wasn’t there to get revenge on him how all the little Twitter trolls say. I was there to tell my truth and, unfortunately, we had problems in our relationship, so my truth wasn’t necessarily so … nice and happy.’

  Taylor is also clearly concerned at the perception that she came across as shaky and forgetful on the stand.

  ‘You go up there and you remember everything and as soon as you get on the stand, you don’t remember anything. So obviously after, when I had time to think about what went on, I could recall a lot more.’

  She also dismisses what some have suggested on social media – that alcohol had impaired their memories on the day of the sunroof incident. ‘I don’t think any of us really drank, I know Darren Fresco doesn’t really drink, Oscar had probably a few glasses of wine or a gin and tonic or whatever, I’d probably had a glass of wine, I’m not a big drinker either.

  ‘The reason why I didn’t know where we were and how we got there and how we got bac
k is because I never go to the Vaal. I only just got my licence. I don’t travel outside of Joburg. I grew up in Dainfern and I didn’t really need to leave Dainfern. I didn’t have a need to recognise signs or areas we were in. I would probably forget that and again that’s why we have technology these days. I obviously use my GPS wherever I go. So I know people say they were all drunk and how I’ve got a bad memory of where I was, but I don’t go to the Vaal often and I don’t plan on going there often in the future, so I had no need to remember where we were.’

  However, once off the stand, Taylor has a surprisingly detailed recollection of the house they visited later in the afternoon where Oscar allegedly went to sign gun papers.

  ‘I can tell you the house was a brick house, they had the garden and garage and their cars were fairly nice, I think it was like an Audi and a Pathfinder. The house was an old middle-class house, they had a guard dog, an Alsatian, and the wife and the daughter were there,’ says Taylor. ‘In court you don’t think of these things and it’s really scary. I remember a lot. I remember the house. I remember the dog, I know that we went to the burger joint after, I don’t know the name of the burger joint because I never go there and I’ll probably never go there again. I know in court I said that I couldn’t recall where we went after the burger joint, but I can now confirm everything, I was very nervous in court and I didn’t think properly.’

  She is also at pains to clear up an allegation made in court by her ex-boyfriend – that she and Darren Fresco conspired against him about the sunroof shooting.

  ‘I would just like to say that the last time I ever spoke to Darren Fresco was when he threatened me over the phone to never come in their space again – when he threatened me was when Oscar and I had broken up the last time. He threatened me not to come back to Joburg, I had never been so badly spoken to by a man. It was so degrading. The first time after Oscar and I had ended that I saw Darren was in the witness room where he came to apologise to me about the way he spoke to me over the phone. The first time I saw him after the incident was in the courtroom. He had come to apologise to me in front of my lawyer. And you know what? If his defence team wants to put it on us that we had colluded, I would like them to please show me proof of phone calls and meetings.’ Fresco declined to comment about Taylor’s claim that he threatened her over the phone on Oscar’s behalf or that he apologised to her in court.