Dad dies to keep family safe
22/01/2007 23:32  - (SA)  

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Virginia Keppler, Beeld

Pretoria - "Darling, they've shot me. I can't hold the door closed any longer," said Willem Smit before giving a mighty shove and locking three robbers away from his family.

Smit, 41, of Acasia, north of Pretoria, was shot through the kitchen door on their smallholding in Heatherdale in front of his wife, Magda, 44, and their 13-year-old son, Steven, on Saturday night.

Magda said: "Willem used his last strength to get the bolt into the door, then grabbed the lock out of my hand to secure it.

He then asked her to phone the police.

Magda said: "He fell backwards against the door and said the pain was dreadful.

'Took my husband's life'

"He said: 'I'm going, come and say goodbye,' then he fainted," sobbed Magda.

"The robbers got nothing but they took my husband's life."

Smit was shot in the left side and the bullet hit an artery and his lungs.

Magda said she went to the toilet about midnight, and her husband also woke up.

She heard something happening at their car.

"Then someone bumped against the steel table outside next to the kitchen door."

She opened the door and shone the torch outside.

Her husband opened the security gate and went outside.

"That was when he saw the robbers. He ran back inside, but it was too late to close the security gate."

She said the robbers spoke Afrikaans and were laughing at them all the time.

"When they saw they were not going to get inside, they walked away, but did not run."

Steven, who helped his mom phone the ambulance and the police, said he saw everything.

"I woke up when I heard a bump against the window pane."

He ran to his mom, and saw his dad die shortly afterwards.

Magda said she felt bitter.

Third family member to be killed

"My only consolation is that my husband fought to the end to keep us safe.

"He's my hero," she said through her tears.

Her brother, Sampie Esterhuizen, said Smit was the third member of their family to be murdered.

Their brother Kobus Esterhuizen, a police officer, was shot dead in November 1995.

Esterhuizen's father-in-law, Douw Kaltwasser, had been stoned to death three months earlier.

- Beeld

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