Online Reporter
Fidelis Munyoro
The sun was beginning to set over Harare’s bustling Chinhoyi Street on April 17, 2017, as Patricia Dengezi sat on the pavement feeding her one-year-old son, Lesley Chitanda.
The road throbbed with the evening rush: commuter omnibuses jostling for passengers, vendors calling out their wares and pedestrians hurrying home.
Patricia, a street vendor herself, perched on a stool made of cardboard boxes, cradling her son on her lap while he nibbled on a packet of chips.
It was an ordinary scene of city life, but within moments, that everyday rhythm would collapse into chaos — and Patricia’s life would be shattered beyond repair.
Without warning, three uniformed police officers stormed onto the street, wielding batons and tyre spikes.
They targeted a line of illegally parked commuter omnibuses, throwing the spikes across the road with a loud clang and smashing the windscreen of one of the vehicles.
Panic erupted instantly.
Five or six kombi drivers, desperate to escape the police, swung their vehicles into the wrong lane of the one-way street and accelerated into oncoming traffic.
Horns blared, people screamed and in seconds, Chinhoyi Street descended into terror.
One driver, Munyaradzi Nyamaruru, swerved violently in a bid to avoid a head-on collision.
He lost control, veered onto the pavement, and ploughed straight into Patricia and her son.
The impact was catastrophic.
Patricia was hurled to the ground, slipping into unconsciousness.
Little Lesley was torn from her arms and crushed under the weight of the vehicle.
He died instantly.
When Patricia woke up days later in a hospital bed, she was battered by severe injuries to her back and leg.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the devastation that awaited her.
Her only child was gone.
Her joy, her future, had been obliterated.
“If the police had not thrown those spikes,” she would later tell the court, “Lesley would still be alive.”
Witnesses confirmed that the officers, realising the carnage they had caused, fled the scene immediately, abandoning Patricia, her child’s lifeless body and the wreckage they had set in motion.
What followed for Patricia was an eight-year battle for justice.
A vendor from a small village in Murehwa, she took on the driver, the vehicle owner, the insurance company and the Zimbabwe Republic Police itself.
The legal process dragged on, complicated by constitutional challenges over the Police Act and years of delays.
The driver charged with culpable homicide absconded, leaving the burden squarely on the shoulders of the police and their supervising authorities.
Years passed, but Patricia’s resolve never wavered.
She wanted answers.
She wanted accountability.
Most of all, she wanted the memory of her son to matter.
Finally, in December 2024, Patricia’s case went to trial.
The courtroom was crowded with lawyers for the Commissioner General of Police and the Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage.
Patricia, supported by her friend and witness Sibongile Mazividza, relived the horror of that day.
“They threw the spikes and smashed the windscreen without any regard for the chaos it would cause,” Patricia testified.
She described the panic that gripped the drivers, the sound of spikes hitting the ground and the terror that filled the air as vehicles sped in the wrong direction on the one-way street.
Mazividza, who had been sitting beside Patricia on that fateful day, corroborated every detail, adding that the police officers had fled the scene after realising what they had caused.
The police defence argued that the officers had merely been enforcing traffic laws and could not have foreseen the drivers’ reckless flight.
But Justice Regis Dembure was unconvinced.
In a scathing judgment, he condemned the officers’ conduct as unlawful, reckless and grossly negligent.
He ruled: “The violent, indiscriminate smashing of commuter omnibuses and the use of spikes in crowded streets and during peak hours can never be justifiable. Human life is sacrosanct.”
He also criticised the police for failing to produce any evidence to support their defence, noting that critical documents, including the accident report and witness statements, had been destroyed.
“What else could justify the destruction of a docket in respect of a serious matter still pending in a criminal court?” he asked, suggesting it was an attempt to conceal misconduct.
The court ruled that the police’s actions had directly triggered the chain of events that killed Lesley.
The harm, Justice Dembure said, was both foreseeable and preventable.
He held the Commissioner General of Police and the Minister of Home Affairs vicariously liable and ordered them to pay Patricia US$42 000 in damages, plus interest and legal costs.
While no compensation could ever fill the void left by her son’s death, the judgment was a measure of accountability and recognition of her suffering.
Justice Dembure went further, warning the police to rethink their methods: “The police must take appropriate and proportionate actions to bring suspects to book. They must give due regard to the possible dangers their actions might bring to bear on the safety of the general public.”
For Patricia, the ruling marked the end of a long, harrowing pursuit of justice.
It was a victory drenched in sorrow.
Her son’s absence would forever haunt her, but the case stood as a powerful reminder of the cost of reckless policing — and a call for reform.
As she left the courtroom, Patricia carried with her both the ache of loss and a flicker of purpose.
Her battle had been fought not only for Lesley, but also for every other mother who might one day be spared the pain she endured.
