Nikolic plea as police pounce
“PLEASE look after our babies”.
Former horse trainer John Nikolic made this plea to his wife during a raid on their yacht Shenanigans, a Fiji customs officer told Suva High Court yesterday.
The officer, who was present at the time of the conversation, also said John told his wife a Colombian marine had hidden something in a bag and he would be “gone for some time”.
Investigation officer with the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service Vasiti Toga said in an emotional conversation in the wheelhouse of the yacht, John said to Yvette she would not agree with what he had done.
He told his wife a Colombian marine had hidden something in a bag and said “I owe a lot of money (and) these people are very dangerous and this is the only way to pay them. I will be gone for some time, please look after our babies”, Ms Toga told the court.
Giving evidence for the prosecution, Ms Toga said Yvette Nikolic was crying and the couple hugged.
Ms Nikolic then asked her husband “why did you do this?”
It was after this Mr Nikolic asked to go to the toilet and senior customs officer Fenton Williams was called to escort him while Ms Toga went to look for a piece of paper so Mr Nikolic could make a statement, the court was told.
Ms Toga said she heard Mr Williams call for help and came “rushing up”.
“When I came back Mr Nikolic was lying on the bench … he was unconscious,” she said.
Ms Toga said she hugged Ms Nikolic and another crew member, Lucie Orard, also came to comfort her.
After medical aid arrived from nearby yachts, Ms Nikolic went down to a washroom with another woman Ms Toga understood to be a medical person from another yacht and returned with a small plastic container with residue in it, that she said might have contained something John had consumed.
That container was field tested but did not test positively, Ms Toga said.
Both Yvette and John Nikolic have pleaded not guilty to drug importation, drug possession and weapons charges.
On Thursday, the court heard a “distraught” Mr Nikolic allegedly told customs officers he wanted to be the one to tell Yvette “what happened…what had transpired, of what he’d done”, after he was informed that “something” had been found on the yacht and the search of Shenanigans would continue.
The court has heard a blue, zip-up bag containing 10, plastic-wrapped and duct-taped cocaine bars had been discovered by members of the FRCS search team “well-hidden” in the catamaran’s lazarette storage locker, under a hatch in the deck of the boat.
“Mr Nikolic was obviously emotional and said he was very disappointed,” senior customs officer Fenton Williams, who led the June 22 search at Denarau Marina, said.
Mr Nikolic then allegedly told Fiji authorities he’d save them the trouble of searching further and volunteered the location of more cocaine bars in the lazarette locker, saying “there’s three more on the other side”, Mr Fenton said.
In his opening statement on Monday lead prosecutor Lee Burney said Mr Nikolic’s “suicide attempt” was the act of a guilty man but also the act of a loving husband who wanted to