The man accused of raping and killing a teenage meisie after she went missing from Kalk Bay beach will know his fate today.
Court 4 at the Western Cape High Court was packed with the family and friends of 16-year-old Michaela Adriaanse as judgement against her alleged killer, Bradley Noble, started on Monday.
Mense wore pink T-shirts adorned with photographs of the pretty Hanover Park teen, and bearing the words, “Justice for Michaela”.
Summarising the State’s case, Acting Judge Yolanda Renqe detailed the day the Grade 9 Crystal High School meisie went missing on March 19, 2015.
Michaela and friends had bunked school and gone to Wynberg pool, but they were refused entry as it was a school day.
Instead, they headed off to Kalk Bay where they smoked dagga and drank whiskey.
There, they met Bradley Noble, who introduced himself as a drug mert from Retreat.
Later, Michaela had a fight with one of her friends over a pair of sunglasses and stormed off to join a group of men from Manenberg.
During the trial, her friends testified that Noble had said he would bring Michaela back and that he followed her, and that was the last time they saw her.
The worried friends spent the next few hours searching for her. They enlisted the help of a “Trevor” and “Garth” who had also been at the beach earlier that day and who had a cellphone number for Noble.
At about 8pm that night they caught the last train home.
They went to Michaela’s home and told her parents the teen was missing.
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The family reported the case to Muizenberg police and that night they went to Noble’s home, but he was not there.
They returned with police for a second time after midnight and this time found him sleeping.
He denied being at the beach, until he saw one of the schoolgirls he had been with that day.
He also denied knowing where Michaela was, and even helped police in the search for her.
Three days later, on Sunday March 22, the girl’s body was found in a bushy area in Kalk Bay.
The State alleges Noble raped her before killing her. DNA results matched the accused.
The matter continues today.