'I think I shot my sister'

2003-12-22 07:43

Annelie Muller

Kommadagga - A 13-year-old boy on Sunday held his dying sister in his arms and tried to comfort her after accidentally shooting her.

"I think I shot my sister", the boy called out to a farmer standing nearby.

Anthony Gowar, on whose farm the children had been at the time of the accident, rushed the eight-year-old to Greenacres hospital in Port Elizabeth but she was declared dead on arrival.

The boy, who cannot be identified as he is a minor, was shooting a dassie, that was in a pipe, with a .22 rifle when his sister peered through the opposite end of the pipe.

A severely traumatised Gowar said that at first he thought the boy was joking when he shouted out that he thought he had shot his sister.

"I shot at the dassie first. I told the boy to go and see if it was dead. I then went and fed my cattle which were about 50 paces away," said the farmer.

The dassie was still, however, alive and the boy fired off the fatal shot - in the presence of the eight-year-old girl and their younger brother.

An emotional Gowar said that when he saw the child lying next to the pipe he immediately thought she was dead.

"Her brother picked her up and put her in the bakkie. I couldn't look at her - I only saw the wound in her head," said Gowar.

According to him, his wife said the girl was still alive. He sped through to Port Elizabeth while his wife called Netcare 911.

According to Elgin Magnus, a spokesperson for the emergency service, a helicopter was called in.

"All we knew was that the man was driving a white Isuzu bakkie. He did not have a cellphone with him," said Magnus.

Police however, set up a roadblock near Kinkelbos on the N2 in the hope of stopping the farmer so that the helicopter could pick up the child.

But the man sped through the roadblock and the helicopter only caught up to the bakkie near the hospital in Port Elizabeth.

- Die Burger