A woman who was violently stabbed in 2018 by the man accused of the murder of a 69-year-old Fish Hoek woman in June, says the victim was failed by the criminal justice system.
Lindrea Gardiner, died in her Marine Court Flat on Saturday June 17 after it was allegedly set alight by Gerrit Heyneke, 42.
Mr Heyneke later died on the same evening after he jumped from Ms Gardiner’s burning flat on the first floor and went to The Galley Restaurant where he allegedly set a tablecloth and some chairs alight with a cigarette lighter, shouted incoherently, and stabbed himself with a knife (“Two dead after beachfront arson frenzy,” Echo, June 22).
A Kalk Bay shop assistant, who asked to remain anonymous and for the shop not to be named, said Mr Heyneke had stabbed her multiple times in the back with scissors in October 2018.
She said that on the day of the incident, she had gone to a shop next door with a pair of scissors to get extra bags from a box in the storeroom.
She had seen Mr Heyneke near the storeroom but had not thought anything of it. He had followed her into the storeroom, closed the door, and taken the scissors from her.
He had asked her what the scissors were for and she had told him they were to open boxes. He had then stabbed her, without provocation, in her upper back.
“He wanted to stab me in the throat, but I fell forward on the floor,” she said.
He had knelt on her back, grabbed her by her hair and banged her head, face first, into the floor.
“I did not think I would make it out of there so I twisted my arm backward and placed it on the back of his head and started praying,” she said.
The shop’s security guard had then kicked down the storeroom door after one of the flat owners had heard her screaming and had called him.
“He wanted to kill me. There was no way I was going to get out of there,” she said.
He had made “grunting noises” as he had stabbed her, and she had asked him repeatedly, “What did I do? What did I do?”
As the security guard had entered, Mr Heyneke had started stabbing himself in the neck and chest and had then run away, she said.
Store manager Sharon Jackson said she had heard about the incident from the security guard who had run up to her and told her to call an ambulance as someone had been attacked in the lane.
That is when she saw Mr Heyneke lying in the road bleeding.
He had run into traffic and been hit by a car, Ms Jackson said, adding that he had subsequently been admitted to ICU.
She had found the shop assistant lying on the storeroom floor crying and bleeding.
“She could barely talk,” she said.
The shop assistant was admitted to False Bay Hospital where she spent the night.
Ms Jackson said police had come to the store to take a statement and the shop assistant’s brother had attended Mr Heyneke’s first court appearance.
However, Ms Jackson said, despite two eyewitnesses who had been willing to testify, nothing had happened and he had walked away scot-free.
Muizenberg police spokesman Captain Stephen Knapp said Mr Heyneke had been arrested on January 29, 2019, and had appeared in court on the same day on a charge of attempted murder.
He had been released on bail of R1 000 on May 29, 2019.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesman Eric Ntabazalila said the matter had been struck off the court roll on October 16, 2019, because the court had refused a postponement for further investigation.
The shop assistant said she felt like the case had not been handled properly.
“It is heartbreaking and very painful to think that the law saw it fit to just scrap the case without anything being done. If something was done, it could have saved the old lady’s life,” she said.
Sarah Brown, a close friend of Mr Heyneke, said he had suffered from schizophrenia, a mental disorder characterised by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganised thinking, among others.
She said he had been on medication and had been doing “so well”.
She said Mr Heyneke had been living with Ms Gardiner at the time of the 2018 stabbing incident.
She described Ms Gardiner as a “salt of the earth, short-hair, yoga type.”
“She was aware of his condition and was sort of a mother figure to him. He did odd jobs for her,” she said.
After the stabbing incident, she said, Ms Gardiner had asked him to leave but they had remained friends.
Ms Brown said she had noticed some “warning signs” a few weeks prior to the arson incident, but Mr Heyneke had assured her he was taking his medication.
“He would say, ‘Hallo, darling,’ in an English accent, and that was a sign that he was going off his meds.”
She said if she had gone to the police to tell them that Mr Heyneke could be potentially dangerous, they would not have believed her.
She said police stations should train their staff to have a better understanding of mental health issues.
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for Gerrit because what he did was horrendous, but they need to understand how dangerous schizophrenia can be. It is like a demonic force when it happens. It wasn’t Gerrit; he was not in his body.”
She said hospitals should also have policies where police were informed if potentially dangerous patients failed to collect their medication.
Western Cape Department of Health spokesperson Natalie Watlington said although there was is no protocol for following up with “street-based patients” for non-adherence to medication, the department worked closely with non-profit partners and community health workers to follow up with patients who did not collect their medication.
