|
Skielik: Teen has gun history
16/01/2008 23:25 - (SA)
Carla Mouton and Leané du Plessis, Beeld
Johannesburg - The youth who has been arrested for shooting and killing three people in a North West squatter camp, also was involved in a shooting when he was 14.
Lawyer Frikkie Pretorius confirmed on Wednesday that Johan Nel, 18, had been found guilty of recklessly discharging a firearm in 2003.
Police spokesperson Louis Jacobs said Nel had fired at someone cutting grass.
Sentencing was suspended provisionally to this year.
Nel was scheduled to appear in court in Swartruggens on Thursday on charges of murder and attempted murder.
They relate to the shooting deaths of three residents of the Skielik squatter camp, about 3km from the Nel family home.
The three, among them a three-month-old baby girl and a 10-year-old boy, were killed with a .303 rifle.
Older brother was attacked
Another seven people were wounded, three of whom are still in a critical condition.
Pretorius said sentencing in the discharging-a-firearm case had been provisionally suspended because Nel was still a minor at the time.
Nel's older brother Heinrich, now 21, was attacked as a 15-year-old.
Seven armed men had attacked him one Sunday morning at their farmhouse. The rest of the family were still in church.
Heinrich had minor injuries from the attack.
The Tweefontein area was apparently a soft target, and cattle were regularly stolen.
Nita Nel, a Swartruggens resident, said on Thursday racism was now unfairly being blamed for the shootings.
"The general feeling in town is that we're being viewed as a racist community, while there's no racism here, in fact.
"On the contrary, the farmers co-operated fully with police by helping to find and bring him in."
- Beeld
|
News
