Cape Town - A forensic analyst working exclusively with facial recognition yesterday took the stand in the Western Cape High Court, where she said the image of the man identified as the shooter matched the description of the accused who the State alleges is the man who shot dead criminal lawyer Pete Mihalik.
The State alleged that Sizwe Biyela was the shooter when Mihalik was murdered in Green Point on October 30, 2018.
Biyela, Nkosinathi Khumalo and Vuyile Maliti are on trial, where they face charges of murder, attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
Nicolet Keyser, attached to the Facial Identification Unit with the SAPS stationed in Cape Town, told the court that she was trained in facial comparisons, ageing, sketching and compilations which she does daily.
Keyser was being questioned by State advocate Greg Wolmarans regarding a report that she compiled in which she was able to match Biyela’s facial profile with that of the man identified in a video showing how Mihalik was shot and killed, previously handed in to the court.
Keyser said her report followed a request to do an analysis of images to be used for identification purposes and required her to make a comparison between the suspect on the CCTV footage and that of a “control photo” (of Biyela) provided to her.
Quoting from the report, Keyser said: “Considering the correspondence of general class characteristics and the presence of individual identifying unique characteristics that were found during my analysis between the person in the CCTV images and in the control photos, I found that the person in the CCTV images and in the control images depicts the same person.”
Keyser explained that following her analysis, which is referred to as “morphological assessment”, her findings indicated several points of similarities between the image provided and that of the video image.
During proceedings earlier this week, Anti-Gang Unit member Leatitia van der Horst said they apprehended Biyela after they identified him as a suspect when going through video footage of the incident.
She said they used a screenshot of the video footage and later spotted him at a bus station in Bellville, where he introduced himself as Sizwe Biyela.
The similarities identified by Keyser included overall skin tone, face shape, forehead shape, distribution of short shaven hair on the face, shape and size of the left ear, definition of the jawline, distribution and density of facial hair on the left side and distribution of the facial hair on the upper lip.
She further testified that the features of the face in both images showed similar features and pointed out that the only difference was his clothing.