POLICEMAN Juan Koch picketed outside the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court yesterday with a placard saying: “Hey, Oscar. Did Reeva get bail?” Koch, a father of three daughters, said he was protesting at the bail hearing of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius because “not enough noise” is being made to raise awareness against women abuse. “As a father, I have so much fear as to the kind of men my daughters are going to marry. “People around the world already have a negative image of the men in our country. What happened with Oscar really didn’t help us (men).” Koch, from Johannesburg, has been a policeman for 14 years. He said the alleged negligence displayed by detective Hilton Botha when collecting evidence at the Blade Runner’s Pretoria home did not constitute enough grounds to grant him bail. “I’m here as an ordinary South African who has had enough of crime and am appealing to him to just own up to what he did,” said Koch, who stood on a black crate with a sign: “Freedom of speech”. His three daughters aged 21, 12 and eight are swimmers and all looked up to Pistorius – who became the first disabled athlete to participate in the...
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