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'He was suffering badly...'
17/12/2007 22:26 - (SA)
Marietie Louw-Carstens, Beeld
Mookgopong - Almost two weeks to the hour after being savagely slashed with a panga, Theuns Janse van Rensburg, 72, was declared dead on Sunday night.
The life-support system that had kept him alive was switched off shortly after 19:00 in Unitas Hospital, Centurion.
His son, Theuns, said the family had decided to switch off the life support after his condition deteriorated rapidly: "To be kept alive like that - that's not how he would have wanted it."
Most of his organs had stopped functioning.
Theuns said: "Just his lungs and a small section of his brain were still functioning. He was suffering badly. I felt so sorry for him."
Injured wife could say goodbye
The attack had robbed his father of all sensation on the right side of his body.
The doctors had told him there was nothing more they could do for his father.
"They said that once the machines had been switched off, he would die sometime during the night, but five minutes after they were switched off, he died. "He fought bravely for his life, but he lost the battle."
Suzette Janse van Rensburg, a daughter-in-law, said the whole family was at his bedside when he died.
His wife Hettie, 72, who had four fingers hacked off during the attack on the couple, was able to say goodbye to her husband. She is still in Unitas Hospital.
Theuns was in a coma and never regained consciousness after the vicious attack on him. He was repeatedly hit on the head and body with a panga at his home about 19:00 on December 2.
After he lost consciousness, his attackers undressed him, put his body on the bed in the main bedroom and covered him with a sheet. They apparently assumed that he'd died.
One of the attackers lay next to him on the bed and watched TV for several hours, and also played with his cellphone.
Hettie, meanwhile, had been hiding in the bathroom adjoining the main bedroom and also thought her husband had died.
Two expected in court
Four of her fingers had to be amputated at the first joint because the attackers had cut them off with a pair of garden shears. Her right arm was so badly broken that the bones protruded through her skin.
She also had facial injuries.
Two Zimbabweans, Brian Ncube, 23, and Tapia Moyo 24, were scheduled to appear in Mookgopong Magistrate's Court in on Tuesday.
Ncube had worked for Janse van Rensburg in his garden service.
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