Hollywood Good

A Pretoria sound engineer - who hours before had helped South Africa bring the World Cup final to the world - was gunned down by police as he allegedly drove headlong into the city's early morning rush-hour traffic.

Nkosinathi Ntuli, 23, who was killed because he was allegedly cheeky to police officers and had apparently "dared" them to shoot him, was shot dead in Marabastad yesterday morning with his Fifa accreditation clearly dangling around his neck.

The rising star, who colleagues described as one of the country's greatest sound engineers, was returning home on Monday after helping the world witness the closing of Africa's first World Cup at Soccer City when he was killed by police driving an unmarked state car.

Ntuli, who moonlighted as a DJ, was killed on the corner of Boom and Cowie streets close to where four Pretoria railway policemen had cornered him.

He was confronted by the Soshanguve and Atteridgeville policemen as they drove down Boom Street to their headquarters in Pretorius Street.

It is believed Ntuli, who some officers have alleged was drunk, took a wrong turn and narrowly avoided crashing into the policemen and several motorists.

The policemen, pursuing the unarmed Ntuli, eventually forced him to stop on the corner of Boom and Cowie streets.

Sources said Ntuli was shot moments after he drove off from where he had been stopped and had allegedly dared the policemen to shoot him.

The policemen shot his champagne-coloured Toyota RunX six times, hitting his car's left rear wheel, back left window, rear window and boot.

The fatally wounded Ntuli lost control of his vehicle and crashed through the wall of a scrap dealership before his car hit a scrapped vehicle and briefly caught alight.

As his killers pulled his body from his car his Fifa accreditation card could be seen around his neck.

While forensic investigators cordoned off and photographed the scene and Ntuli's body, lying sprawled in the dirt, his mother, Elizabeth, broke down in tears.

Demanding answers from police as officers lifted Ntuli's body, with his yellow Bafana Bafana shirt showing underneath a jacket, into a mortuary gurney, Elizabeth Ntuli said she would never forgive the police for what they had done.

"If he was such a threat why did they not use other methods to stop him? Why did they not block off roads so he could not escape?"

Ntuli said she could not understand why her son had been killed.

"This is not right. He didn't even have a gun. Surely they could have done something else to stop him?