Posted on 11/20/2019 7:32:36 AM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
A gun presented as evidence in a robbery trial has accidentally discharged in court, killing a prominent lawyer in a freak accident.
A prominent South African barrister has been shot and killed in court after a gun presented as evidence in the trial went off.
Senior state advocate Addelaid Ferreira-Watt died after the freak shooting at the Ixopo Regional Court on Monday when the shotgun dropped and blasted her in the left hip, News24 reported.
“It is alleged that the weapon was brought to court to be entered as evidence in a house robbery case when it accidentally discharged in court,” a police spokesman told the website.
Court staff desperately tried to stop the bleeding, but the 51-year-old mother-of-one later died in hospital. South African police are investigating a possible case of culpable homicide and are working to find out why the shotgun was still loaded.
“There is absolutely no need for a weapon being submitted in evidence in a court of law to still be capable of being fired,” a legal friend of Ms Ferreira-Watt told the UK Mirror.
“The weapon and the ammunition that it had contained at the time of the alleged crime should have been submitted in separate evidence bags, so someone is in big trouble. Addelaid was an excellent lawyer, a devoted mother and a lover of art and animals. For her to be taken away so cruelly and in such a freakish way is just agonising.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Safety could well have been on. Pretty common for the safety to only block the trigger on a lot of guns, particularly cheaper guns.
snip
The Witness reported that the firearm was evidence in the case of five
men accused of attacking and robbing a couple on an Ixopo farm in 2014.
The firearm had reportedly been stolen in the robbery and was later recovered
and returned to the couple.
The couple, Cheryl Biggs and her husband Dave, confirmed to the newspaper
that police had not kept the firearm as an exhibit pending the trial, because
they needed it for protection. Instead, police collected the firearm from them
on Monday
CLICK
Cops, Evidence techs, Court Clerks, etc. Pretty much everyone other than tiny companies in SA have to comply with AA.
Idiots Guide to SA AA below.
Practically, how would this reflect in a workplace?
An employer must create an action plan which makes sure it has the right proportion of designated people - black, coloured, Indian, female and disabled people, working in all levels of the organisation. This includes the very top levels of management. For example, if you have 50 members on your board of directors, then you must aim to have approximately 35 black, five coloured, four Indian and five white directors. Of these, 25 should be female and two should be disabled. (With thanks to Labourguide for the figures.)
Where does affirmative action apply?
Employers with 50 or more workers, or whose annual income is more than the amount specified in Schedule 4 of the Employment Equity Act
Municipalities
Organs of State
Employers ordered to comply by a bargaining council agreement
Any employers who volunteer to comply.
it is SO difficult to avoid commenting on this one, ha!
Regardless of the circumstances, there’s more than enough stupid to go around with this one.
(My brother-in-law: "I tell her and tell her, but will she listen...?)
Enough “affirmative action” nonsense. I despise affirmative action but this tragedy is simply a result of people not knowing how to handle firearms.
I myself am guilty of an accidental discharge and take pity on these poor people even if they do look goofy.
That ALL weapons handed to you as if LOADED and clear them personally.
Another case of those nasty guns just killing indiscriminately again. If someone with any brains at all
would have checked the gun to see if was loaded this wouldn’t have happened. My God people are stupid!
“in a Scheels sporting goods store and some little jackass employee was pointing a rifle at people.”
Shoulda been fired on the spot.
Well, would you look at that, I think we might have found the first genuine case of a gun (rather than a person wielding a gun), killing someone!
Was the gun control crowd right all along? Maybe the guns have achieved sentience and this is the first shot in their war for independence?
Fatal stupidity is usually fatal.
I am originally from SA. As such I know a tad more than you do about the impact of AA on the society. Trust me on this. People who are totally clueless are hired over competent experts. People who couldn’t find their own asses with both hands are put in charge. This is not a gun issue. This is a competence issue.
The people in charge raise their beds to keep them safe from the Tokoloshe. (The e is silent)
https://community.soulstrut.com/discussion/64589/raised-beds-advice-tokoloshe-related
A little different scenario but not exactly rare here in the States either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUonA66btgI
I have single shot shotgun from the 1960s that has an exposed hammer, and with the hammer down and a shell in the chamber, the firing pin is resting on the primer, and the hammer is resting on the firing pin with about 2mm of travel available.
If I whack the back of the hammer with a 1' piece of 2x4, IT WILL FIRE.
I did so to demonstrate to someone why you never wanted to carry that particular shotgun loaded. The only safety is a half-cock notch in the hammer that can easily be broken off if dropped with enough force.
(The shotgun is an H. Koon Snake Charmer .410.)
This was also the case with Colt single action revolvers from the 1800s, which is why cowboys always loaded only five rounds in the six gun and rested the hammer on an empty chamber.
What are you trying to say? White toddlers shoot their Grandmas once every few months in the USA.
I have been on the jury on a couple of gun cases. Every time I have seen a pistol in court, it has a cable lock running up the magazine well and through the locked-open chamber.
Hard to believe somebody brought a gun into court without having it open and obviously locked.
So a lawyer got killed.
I fail to see the downside.
I am trying to say that there are toddlers more qualified and capable than the people who get these jobs. I lived there. 3/4ths of the populace have a sub room temp IQ and I am not kidding one bit.
The population makeup is Black African at 80.2%, White at 8.4%, Mixed at 8.8%, Indian/Asian at 2.5%, and Other/Unspecified at 0.5%. Only 28.4% of South Africans over the age of twenty years have completed the 12th grade while only 33.8% even got to high school and 8.6% had no schooling at all. 12.1% have a tertiary qualification.
Black and under educated make up the vast majority of AA hires. That is a demographic fact. I am not being racist as you imply. I am pointing to the facts on the ground.
This is what happens when you put unqualified people in charge of a world class power system.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=eskom+blackouts
The stupid it burns here.
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