Rhino trial: gun link in spotlight
THE senior counsel defending three men charged with rhino poaching yesterday went head to head with a SA Police ballistic expert who says ballistic evidence links a dart gun police found in their possession with darts found at different rhinos poaching scenes.
Advocate Terry Price, SC, yesterday took issue with what he termed W/O Yolandi Schoeman’s “unprofessional” methodology used to reach her conclusions and her photographs which he said appeared to show more dissimilarities than similarities between test darts fired by the gun and darts found at poaching scenes.
Jabulani Ndlovu, 40, Forget Ndlovu, 37, and Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu, 38 face 50 charges related to the poaching of 13 rhino throughout the Eastern Cape over the past five years.
The state alleges in the indictment that the three men were caught red-handed in a raid on a holiday chalet in Grahamstown with a 10.27kg freshly harvested rhino horn valued R1-million, a bloody saw, .22 dart gun and tranquiliser darts, M99 tranquiliser, cell phones and sim cards. The raid took place within hours of the poaching of a magnificent white rhino from nearby Bucklands Game reserve.
They are charged in relation to the Bucklands incident as well as the killing of two rhino at a game farm in Jansenville, four rhino in the Graaf-Reinet area, five from the Cradock area, and one from the Great Fish River.
With the aid of photographs of microscopic striations and grooves Schoeman found during ballistic testing on test darts fired from the gun, she said she could link them to darts taken from poaching scenes.
This is the first time ever that ballistics experts have linked a dart to a particular dart gun. The gun in question is a modified .22 Marlin bolt action firearm with a rifled barrel, which Schoeman said left unique marks on the darts.
But Price said to the naked eye, there appeared to be more differences then similarities in the striations and grooves between the two sets of darts.
Schoeman conceded that this might be the case but she said that the darts were examined under a three dimensional microscope and the photos reproduced were two dimensional.
Price put it her that the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners has found that an opinion could only be justifiably formed that it was a practical impossibility that another firearm could be found that would exhibits similar individual microscopic agreement as found on the darts.
Schoeman agreed and said that this was her opinion.
She said she had followed standard operating procedures which required that the tool marks on the test darts must be found to be significantly similar to those found at the scenes.
Price said this was not an adequate test.
Private ballistic expert Cobus Steyl was seated next to Price and the three men’s instructing attorney Alwyn Griebenow during the cross examination of Schoeman.