Resident in dock after wild public tirade
SUNRISE-ON-SEA resident Gavin Weyer, who shook up his neighbourhood last week with a frenzied episode at his home, told the East London Magistrate’s Court yesterday he would rather go to jail than get psychiatric help.
Barefoot and wearing what seemed to be the same black shorts and blue overall jacket as last week, Weyer, 48, spent 15 minutes ahead of his appearance conferring with candidate attorney J C Zandberg and a blonde woman who only identified herself as his girlfriend.
When the trio emerged from a side chamber, Weyer was approached by an unidentified woman who spoke earnestly to him, at times touching his arm comfortingly.
He was overheard insisting he would not go to doctors and nurses again and that he wanted to represent himself in court. Looking distressed, the woman left the courtroom.
Weyer then resumed writing zealously on a piece of paper, having first asked the Daily Dispatch reporter her name.
Addressing magistrate Nazeem Joemath, prosecutor Lerato Phakisi read out two charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and one of malicious damage to property. She said the state opposed bail on the grounds that Weyer was a “danger to society”.
Appearing for Weyer, candidate attorney J C Zandberg, standing in for attorney Neil Ristow, requested the matter be held until today to allow Ristow to bring the formal bail application. He also requested the matter be heard in camera.
Joemath said such an application, including reasons for it, would have to be done in open court today.
Zandberg asked that his client be held in the psychiatric wing of the West Bank prison overnight, but when the magistrate addressed Weyer, asking if he had followed proceedings, the accused was adamant he did not want to stay in the psychiatric ward.
“I’ve already been for psychiatric help at Cecilia Makiwane and they forced an injection and pills into me. I don’t want to be a banana. “I’d rather wait in jail.” Weyer was taken into custody at his double-storey seaside home on Saturday in a dramatic arrest which required the services of a police negotiator after he hid from police and clambered onto his roof.
After his arrest on charges of assault and malicious damage to property, he was taken to Cecilia Makiwane hospital for psychiatric treatment.
He was remanded in custody when he made his first appearance on Monday.
Weyer allegedly set fire to his own home in November and appeared to unravel after the death of his father.
He covered the exterior of his home and the community noticeboard with painted messages and last Thursday allegedly threw an acidic substance at two men, hurled rocks at two cars and unsettled neighbours by throwing bottles and red and white paint on the street.
When the Dispatch visited him at his home the following day, he was agitated and bleeding from a head wound.
He insisted residents were a cult, had “smashed” him, set fire to his home and wanted to torch the rest of it. —