Expert dismisses accused’s amnesia claim

A CLINICAL psychiatrist at Valkenberg Hospital testified in the Cape High Court this week that murder accused Lloyd Simbarashe did not have medical or psychiatric cause for his alleged amnesia.

Dr Nyameka Dyakalashe told the court that the presence of “perceptual disturbances alone” was not enough to diagnose a mental disorder like psychosis as claimed by Simbarashe.

The 42- year- old Zimbab- wean national stands accused of murdering his then girlfriend, Nikita Lewis, by stab- bing her 18 times inside the Pick and Save Superette in Manenberg on October 9, 2015.

Simbarashe claims he has no memory of the alleged attack but Dyakalashe disagreed with him after she and a panel at Valkenberg assessed him for one month.

“He has a good understanding of the charges against him and was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of the act,” said Dyakalashe.

The defence’s case is that Simbarashe had been abusing dagga and cigarettes since the age of 13, and this may have attributed to his alleged amnesia and subsequent treatment at various mental institutions.

Dyakalashe described to the court the process that is followed when a new patient is admitted for psychiatric observation.

During the team’s assessment of Simbarashe, it emerged that he had previously been admitted to two mental institutions in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, but only one of these claims had been confirmed.

Lloyd Simbarashe