Pupil commits suicide

2003-06-23 08:38

Cindy Preller

Whittlesea - A matric pupil shot himself at the weekend while stunned classmates looked on - his fellow pupils' lives were probably saved when the boy's best friend managed to take the magazine out of the pistol.

Bulelani Mabethu (20) from Funda High School arrived nearly an hour late for extra classes on Saturday morning. He refused to answer when his teacher, Ofosu Kwakye, asked why he was late.

He had no books with him and when Kwakye confronted him about this, he grabbed his best friend's books.

Mabethu, whose classmates described him as a quiet young man, apparently acted strangely that morning and the teacher asked him whether he was drunk.

"No, just a bit sick," Mabethu replied before taking out a pistol and threatening to shoot himself.

His best friend pulled the magazine from the gun and ran outside. It is not known whether Mabethu intended to turn the gun on his fellow pupils, but the rest of the class ran outside, fearing that Mabethu would shoot them.

"Unfortunately there was already a live round in the pistol and the boy ran outside and shot himself in front of his fellow grade 12 pupils," police spokesperson Captain Thozamile Lange said. He shot himself in the chest and died before he could be taken to the local hospital.

Although fellow pupils suspect that Mabethu was under the influence of alcohol at the time, police will only be able to confirm or dismiss this claim after a post-mortem on Wednesday.

Police have opened a case against Mabethu's brother because the pistol was not locked in a safe.

"After his brother had been shot, he came to report the pistol as stolen. He suspects that Mabethu took the pistol from his luggage that morning," Lange said.

- Die Burger