Two former friends turned on each other at the Western Cape High Court as the murder trial for slain toddler Orderick Lucas got under way.
Mom Davedine Lucas, 29, and murder accused Melvin Volkwyn pointed fingers at each other in their testimony as questions arose over who was the last person to look after the one-year-old tot from Eerste River in the days leading up to his death.
Orderick went missing on 24 March, 2019, but his disappearance was only discovered four days later, after Davedine was the victim of a mob attack.
The decomposed body of the toddler was found dumped in a stormwater drain in Kleinvlei Way by a group of children trying to get their ball out. It is still not clear what led to Orderick’s death.
Volkwyn was arrested and after being in Pollsmoor Prison for nearly two years, he appeared in the dock on Monday, where he pleaded not guilty to murder.
In his version, told by his defence attorney, he denied killing the little boy and claimed the child was in his mother’s care at the time.
Wearing black denim jeans and jacket with a black shirt and a curly perm, the former hairdresser stared at his former friend as she took the witness stand.
In her testimony, Davedine told the court that she had been friends with Volkwyn, aka Mel, for eight months as they regularly smoked tik and buttons together.
She said on 24 March, she had gone to the home of a mutual friend, Eon Adams, with Orderick on her arm, when Mel asked her if she was going to buy drugs.
She said Mel decided to go to the drug dealer himself and while at Adams’ home, an angry mob arrived and attacked her as she held her son.
Fearing they would hurt him, she said she left her child at Adams’ home and went with the crowd who accused her of stealing a cellphone.
She passed out after a group of children kicked her in the head.
She slept at her mother’s house that night and the next day she returned to Adams’ home to fetch her son but was told Volkwyn had taken him.
“I didn’t have a problem. I thought it was safe for him to be with Mel,” she told the court.
She then went to Eerste River Day Hospital for her injuries and after returning home, she saw Mel with another friend and he allegedly told her: “Jou kind is veilig by jou ma se huis (your child is safely at your mother’s house).”
This was at a time when social workers had removed Orderick from his parents’ care several months prior and placed him with his ouma.
In the days that followed, the mom of three said she went to work but on 28 March she missed the truck to work, and instead went to her mother’s house.
She said she got a fright when her mom said Orderick was never brought to her.
Davedine says she went looking for Volkwyn but was told he no longer lived near the hairdresser and was directed to another house, where she found him and told him that she had given her son to him, but Volkwyn denied this.
She then went to the police station to report her son missing.