Details emerge on Shaduka’s defence

THE fatal shooting of Selma Shaimemanya was an accident that happened when she fell against her husband, businessman Lazarus Shaduka, while he had a loaded pistol in his hands, it was claimed in Shaduka’s murder trial in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.

More details on Shaduka’s defence to the murder charge he is facing in connection with his wife’s death emerged when his defence counsel, Albert Strydom, grilled the Police officer who investigated the case on Shaimemanya’s death, Detective Inspector Zachariah Amakali, under cross-examination yesterday.Shaduka, who is turning 37 today, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and defeating or obstructing the course of justice, or attempting to do so, at the start of his trial before Judge Kato van Niekerk on Thursday last week. Explaining his plea, Strydom only told the court that Shaimemanya (33) had died as a result of a shooting accident, which occurred when a gun owned by Shaduka accidentally went off in the couple’s home in Klein Windhoek on July 13 2008.Cross-examining Amakali, Strydom confronted him with a statement he had made repeatedly under oath during two unsuccessful bail applications by Shaduka in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court at the end of July 2008 and again in March 2009.In his testimony during those bail applications, Amakali claimed Shaduka had initially told him that his wife had committed suicide.Seeing that the fatal shot struck Shaimemanya high on her back, between her spinal column and right shoulder, Amakali regarded this claim as suspicious and decided to charge Shaduka with murder.In his testimony before Judge Van Niekerk, however, Amakali said Shaduka never told him who had shot his wife or that she had committed suicide. The only explanation for his previous testimony on that score that Amakali could offer was that he might not have properly understood the questions he was being asked on that issue during the bail applications.When he first met Shaduka on the evening after the shooting, Shaduka did not tell him that it had been an accident, Amakali maintained. He said Shaduka told him that he arrived home, that his wife still opened the gate for him, and that he then found their 11-month-old child crying in the house while Shaimemanya was on a couch, her eyes were ‘turning white’, and he saw some blood. He then rushed her to a clinic in the Eros area, where she was certified dead.Shaduka first claimed that the shooting had been an accident when he made a first written statement to the Police the very next day, Strydom pointed out.In that statement, Shaduka related he and his wife were together on a couch, watching television, when his wife took the firearm he had been carrying with him and cocked it. He claimed he told her not to play with the gun. He then got up, telling her not to handle the firearm the way she had in the presence of their child, he claimed.’The firearm then went off while it was already in my hand,’ Shaduka stated, according to the statement taken by Amakali.According to Shaduka’s instructions to Strydom, though, he had also told Amakali that the shot went off when Shaimemanya got up from the couch and then fell back onto him. Amakali denied that this was what he was told by Shaduka.In the statement taken by Amakali, Shaduka is recorded to have said: ‘The incident occurred none intentionally, the gun went accidentally off. We did not argue, we were just watching the television. I loved my wife not intentionally harming her.’ (sic)Shaduka has remained in custody since his arrest almost two years ago.The trial is continuing today with State advocate Belinda Wantenaar expected to call expert witnesses from the National Forensic Science Institute of Namibia to testify on the firearm and nature of the gunshot wound that claimed Shaimemanya’s life.