Mom tells how girl, 12, dad were gunned down
‘Men said they were cops and kicked in door before firing’
SORRY uncle, but it is your turn. Those were the chilling words Port Elizabeth mother Candice Tee heard just seconds before her daughter was shot dead and her husband seriously wounded. Tee was testifying yesterday in the Port Elizabeth High Court against the two men who allegedly killed her 12-year-old daughter, Aliya, and wounded her husband, Edmund.
It is believed the June 7 2016 attack on the family came about as Tee had witnessed an alleged gang murder in front of their Bethelsdorp home.
Testifying against Nealon Redhouse, 18, and Deon Harmse, 24, an emotional Tee said the men had first tried to get into the home by pretending to be policemen.
When the ruse did not work, they kicked in the back door and started firing at the family.
Aliya, who was also known as Angel, was a promising Strelizia Primary School pupil at the time of her murder.
Yesterday, as Tee identified Redhouse as one of the assailants, she said he was a neighbour’s son whom she had known for 17 years.
She said it was Redhouse who had pointed a gun at her through the half-open back door while her husband struggled in vain to keep them out.
“We couldn’t open the front door because the key was broken . . . there were people outside banging on the door, shouting for us to open because it was the police.
“We didn’t believe this because my husband didn’t see any police lights.”
Two couches were pushed against the front door to block the gunmen’s entrance and Tee ran to the living room to send a frantic WhatsApp message to her family chat group asking for help.
During the commotion, Tee also ran to her daughter’s room to check on her.
She said just minutes earlier Aliya had asked her if she would lie on her bed for 10 more minutes. They had just read a Bible verse together.
After checking on her daughter she returned to help her husband who was, by then, at the slightly open back door, trying to see what was going on outside.
The attackers then moved to the back of the house.
“I saw someone pointing a gun at me [through the gap in the open door] while Edmund was behind it trying to push it closed with his right shoulder,” she testified. Asked by state prosecutor Mujaahid Sanden if she knew who had pointed the gun, she said: “Yes, it was Nealon.”
The men kicked in the door and started firing.
She said she had seen Redhouse twice that day, once in the morning and again in the afternoon “when he was coming down the road with ‘Kwas’ [Harmse]. They both greeted us”. Tee then identified Harmse as the second shooter.
She said she had treated Redhouse as one of her own as he had often played with her son, 17, while they were growing up.
Both Redhouse and Harmse have been charged with the murder of Aliya, the attempted murder of her father, housebreaking with intent to murder, attempted housebreaking, falsely impersonating a police officer and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Earlier in a day of emotional testimony, Constable Quinton Gould – the first responding officer on the scene – struggled to hold back tears as he recalled the devastating crime scene and seeing the little girl’s lifeless body.
He said Aliya’s father was lying on the floor wounded when he had identified Harmse and Redhouse as two of the four shooters. He did not name the other two. Redhouse and Harmse are allegedly members of the Spotbouers gang.
Gould testified that it was a difficult scene to process. “It was very traumatic,” he said. The trial continues today in the Port Elizabeth High Court.