Vehicle and licensing experts have set out to link the brother of alleged underworld kingpin Nafiz Modack to a Mercedes Benz apparently used to carry out the hit on a Hawks detective.
Intricate testimonies by a former Mercedes Benz South Africa employee and the South African Insurance Bureau (ICB) at the Western Cape High Court have revealed the details of an intensive investigation by the Hawks to trace the vehicle’s origins.
This comes amid testimony by a self-confessed hitman who claimed Modack supplied a black Merc to murder Hawks detective Nico Heerschap, but during the botched hit he ended up shooting the cop’s 74-year-old father, Nicholaas.
According to the state’s case, Modack’s co-accused Fagmeed Kelly was later arrested in Woodstock with the car key. The Merc was set alight shortly after the murder.
Former Mercedes Benz employee, Kim Rogers, told the court that in April 2022 she was contacted by the Hawks to test the key, which was sent to Germany to obtain a VIN number of the Merc. The model was not clarified.
Also testifying was Andrew Strumpher from the ICB who said he was handed the VIN number by the Hawks and asked to track the details of the vehicle.
The specialised Natis profiler said while he found that the vehicle had three different registration plates, the register number had provided more clues on the ownership, as "the registration number will stay with a vehicle for its whole life.“
He said the vehicle was first released into the market by the manufacturer in 2011 and registered. In May 2019 a temporary permit was issued by the Sugar Berry Trading car dealership to Yaseen Modack.
Strumpher noted that on 9 July 2019, the day of the Heerschap murder, the car was marked as stolen by police on the Natis system but strangely it was found that the car had already been reported stolen in November 2018 and the matter reported to Kuils River SAPs.