The Liberal Gun Club Forum

A freak incident has left the South African legal community in shock after a prominent prosecutor was accidentally shot to death Monday in the middle of a trial — with a gun that was central to the case, authorities said. The attorney, Addelaid Ferreira-Watt, was prosecuting a home robbery when a loaded shotgun was brought into the courtroom to be entered as evidence. Somehow, as a police officer “was trying to pick up or handle the firearm,” it went off and struck Ferreira-Watt in the left hip, a spokesman for South Africa’s police watchdog agency, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, told The Washington Post.

Ferreira-Watt, 51, was transferred to the hospital but did not survive. Now, the IPID is investigating the case as a culpable homicide, spokesman Sontaga Seisa said. “We are basically going to be focusing on whether the policeman’s finger was on the trigger, or whether the gun went off accidentally somehow,” Seisa said.

Brigadier Jay Naicker, a spokesman for the South African Police Service in KwaZulu-Natal province, told local news radio station 702 that the suspects stole the shotgun from a couple during a 2014 farmhouse robbery in the town of Ixopo, in the KwaZulu-Natal province. When police caught the five suspects, Naicker said a judge allowed police to return the shotgun to the couple because they said they needed it for protection.

The couple, Cheryl and Dave Biggs, said police officers came by to pick up the gun for the trial on Monday, South African newspaper the Witness reported. When Cheryl Biggs found out the gun went off during court, she was “extremely distraught,” she told the newspaper. Police had even asked her if the gun was loaded or not — but she told them she didn’t know for sure.

Now, it’s unclear why police didn’t find out. “Whatever the circumstances,” Johan Booysen, former head of KwaZulu-Natal police’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, wrote on Twitter, “Some-one will have to account for the death of [Advocate] Adelaide Ferreira-Watt in Umzimkhulu court yesterday.”

senorgrand wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 12:11 pm I would think this is a failure on multiple levels.

1) Officers picking up gun should have checked it.
2) Gun should have been checked before entering police property room
3) Gun should have been check by court officers before being entered into evidence
4) Four rules (at least three were broken...multiple times)