Two police officers accused of killing Eldorado Park teenager Nateniel Julies in cold blood will appear in court today after being charged with murder. We welcome their arrest, and hope his family and residents of that township will see justice being served.
The details surrounding the shooting of Julies,16, do not make any sense. The official account, which led to violent protests in the area, was that the teen was caught in the crossfire between police and gangsters. However, three witnesses have come forward with heartbreaking accounts that paint a picture of police brutality instead.
Julies, who was unarmed at the time of the attack, is said to have been standing next to a truck in the street, eating biscuits when a police vehicle with four officers arrived on the scene. They spoke to him but nobody could hear what they were saying.
"He didn't seem worried by them. I remember seeing him dancing by himself. I carried on walking when I heard the shot go off. I turned around and saw two of them [police officers] rushing with him to the bakkie and then they sped off," a witness told Sunday Times.
His version has been corroborated by two others. One of them was quoted saying the boy "was thrown into the back of the van like rubbish". Julies was taken to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital where he later died.
The latest assumption is that the officers were frustrated by his answers. Really? Is that how cheap life has become at the hands of police, that you must give a "satisfactory" answer or die? Why did officers, who are supposed to understand the law, shoot a defenceless boy who posed no danger to them?
Had these officers cared enough about the community they serve they would have alighted from the car and gone closer to Julies. They would have realised he was harmless and did not mean whatever he said to them, as his family has since revealed that he had Down's syndrome.
If the two are found guilty we call on the court to give them the maximum sentence. They are a danger to a society they were meant to serve; they do not deserve their badges and should not be handling guns. We hope the Julies family will eventually find peace and closure as the matter unfolds in court.
