I did not seal off crime scene, cop tells Ivana Smit inquest
The investigating officer during the early stage of Ivana Smit’s mysterious death also says she was not aware that the couple who hosted her were suspects.
KUALA LUMPUR: A police officer who investigated the case of Ivana Smit said she had not been instructed by her superiors to cordon off the crime scene at the condominium where the body of the Dutch model was found in December last year.
Dang Wangi police sergeant Haliza Hamdan, the 20th witness in the ongoing inquest into Smit’s death, told the Kuala Lumpur Coroner’s Court here today that she had only received an order to “go to CapSquare Residences”.
“I was just ordered to go to the sixth-floor unit,” Haliza, 45, told Coroner Mahyon Talib earlier this afternoon while being questioned by deputy public prosecutor N Joy Jothi, referring to the CapSquare condo balcony where Smit was found.
Haliza, however, agreed to a suggestion by Jothi that it was standard protocol to seal off with police tape “possible crime scenes”, such as the unit on the 20th floor from where Smit’s body had fallen off, and the sixth-floor unit where she had landed.
She said the sixth-floor condo unit was ordered to be sealed because Smit’s body was found there, but she did not remember seeing it being taped off during her visits to the building.
Questioned further, Haliza said she was “only tasked with finding footprints” in the 20th-floor unit.
Smit was believed to have fallen from a 20th-floor condo on the afternoon of Dec 7 last year. The apartment belongs to an American-Kazakh couple she had befriended at the time, Alex Johnson and Luna Almaz.
Police had originally classified the case as sudden death, but it was re-opened this year after pressure from Smit’s family, who claimed there was foul play and a cover-up.
The inquest is underway to determine the facts and events leading to Smit’s sudden death and whether there is enough evidence to re-open the case and eventually bring it to trial.
This will be decided in an open court a month after the inquest ends on Sept 25, but it could be postponed as the inquest has already been extended twice to allow witnesses to finish testifying.
Meanwhile, Haliza said that she was informed about the identity of the Johnsons and the possibility of the couple being considered suspects in the case by a police officer, adding she would “never have known” unless they told her.
“I was not informed by them. They should have told me,” she told Jothi who reminded her that the American-Kazakh couple were her suspects as she was the investigating officer, adding she should have been kept in the loop.
Haliza also informed the inquest that she had taken several items seized from the 20th-floor unit for processing at the Forensics Department, including two bathrobes, an empty beer bottle from the balcony, and a broken bottle from the living room.
A police officer later handed to her Smit’s passport and other personal documents, said Haliza.
The officer later became the investigating officer for the case, and it was only then that she learnt of the deceased’s name.
“Only then I knew her name was Ivana.”
Haliza’s testimony continues on Sept 19.
Smit moved to Malaysia when she was three years old and lived for 13 years in Penang with her paternal grandparents.
Stay current - Follow FMT on WhatsApp, Google news and Telegram
Her body was repatriated to the Netherlands where she was laid to rest in her birth town of Roermond on Dec 30 amid intense Dutch media coverage.