Gardee family cries incompetence as police failed to see Hillary died from gunshot wound to the head

The Gardee family said on Wednesday that postmortem results revealed that Hillary Gardee had been shot at the back of her head.

The family voiced its concerns that the police did not pick up on this fact when her body was discovered on Tuesday.

“The postmortem results reveal to us an incompetent handling of the crime scene by the police,” said Sinawo Thambo, spokesperson for the EFF and the Gardee family on Wednesday.

Hillary, the daughter of former EFF secretary-general and attorney Godrich Gardee, was discovered outside Mbombela on Tuesday.

She was last seen when she went shopping at a plaza in Mbombela on April 29. 

Thambo said the family was disappointed by this development.

“We had gone to get an update from the postmortem in terms of what happened to Hillary and we have received information that the bullet wound was located in the back of her head, which means that she was shot almost execution style,” Thambo said.

He said the family’s biggest concern was that police on the scene did not pick up that  Gardee had been shot.

“This is gross incompetence. It does not need forensics to identify a bullet wound on the body. This means that police did not conduct thorough investigations of the crime scene and at this point ... it is too late.  That crime scene has been contaminated.  People were doing walkabouts with the media there,” Thambo said.

Among those was police minister, Bheki Cele. 

Thambo said this development brought into question whether the police service was taking the matter seriously.

“We thought they were working hard. As things stand now, there is no indication that this is going anywhere if we allow the police to lead this process,” Thambo said.

Thambo said the family was becoming concerned that the motives behind the kidnapping and murder of Gardee might be much deeper than a common criminal act of abduction and extortion for money.

“There may be more underlying and serious circumstances, because the trend we see now resembles the murder of Tshegofatso Pule, resembles the murder of Karabo (Mokoena), and the Western Cape (murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana),” Thambo said.

TimesLIVE has reached out  to Mpumalanga police for comment. 

The article will be updated once their comment is received. 

TimesLIVE

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