Mother recounts fatal assault on her child

A YOUNG mother yesterday recounted in the High Court in Windhoek how an assault on her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter ended her child’s life almost two years ago.

Elizabeth Kooitjie testified before Acting Judge Kobus Miller in the trial of her former boyfriend, Jeremias Swartbooi (31). He is charged with murder in connection with the death of Kooitjie’s daughter, Dorothea Kooitjie, at a farm between Gibeon and Maltahöhe on September 19 2009.The little girl, then two and a half years old, died from a neck fracture and spinal cord injury, it is indicated in an autopsy report that is part of the evidence before Acting Judge Miller.Photographs that are also part of the evidence in the trial show that the girl had open wounds on her head, that her left eye, the left side of her face and her upper lip were bruised and swollen, and that she also had an injury next to her right eye.Swartbooi pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, assault and defeating or obstructing the course of justice, or attempting to do so, when his trial began yesterday.Except for the murder charge he is also accused of having assaulted Elizabeth Kooitjie and having concealed or destroyed evidence of his alleged assault on the child by instructing someone to wash blood off his car.Kooitjie told the court she and her daughter were with Swartbooi in his car when Swartbooi wanted to beat the girl, and a tussle ensued between him and Kooitjie over the child.She said she did not know why he wanted to beat the child.Swartbooi managed to pull the girl out of her grip, and then pressed the child’s head against the car’s steering wheel with his hand around her neck, Kooitjie said.The girl was crying, she said.Swartbooi later stopped the car and took Dorothea Kooitjie out of the vehicle, placing her on top of the car’s boot, Kooitjie testified.She said when she also got out of the car another struggle took place between her and Swartbooi over the girl, and in this process the child fell off the boot, landing on the ground.Swartbooi picked the child up and placed her on the boot again, she said. He then slapped the girl, and she again fell to the ground, Kooitjie said.An angry Swartbooi continued with the assault on the child by kicking her, and she fell under the car, Kooitjie claimed.She said Swartbooi pulled the crying child out from under the car.They drove off from the scene of that assault, and while driving Swartbooi took the girl and threw her over the car’s front seats towards the back, Kooitjie testified. She said Dorothea Kooitjie landed on the floor at the back of the vehicle.Kooitjie said she could see blood coming from her daughter’s mouth. She said she herself was in shock, and she did nothing to help her child.When they made a stop at the house of people they knew, Swartbooi asked Kooitjie’s brother to wash blood off the back of his car, the court was told.The brother, David Kooitjie, told Acting Judge Miller that Swartbooi said to him he had only slapped the girl.Swartbooi’s defence lawyer, Edwin Coetzee, told the mother that according to Swartbooi he never assaulted her child.’He is lying,’ was her response to that.’He’s the one who killed my baby,’ she also said.She said Swartbooi assaulted the girl for no reason, except that he had said that he did not like her child.Coetzee also told Kooitjie that according to Swartbooi it was she who had assaulted her own child.Kooitjie denied this, too. ‘Why should I beat up my own child?’ she asked in response.State advocate Jack Eixab wrapped up the prosecution’s case in the trial yesterday afternoon.Swartbooi is expected to testify in his own defence when the trial continues today.

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