Farmer, family found shot dead
2011-04-18 18:28
Johannesburg - A "well-known" farming family from De Aar in the Northern Cape has been found shot dead in a bakkie on a gravel road, police say.
Spokesperson Hendrik Swart said: "One of the employees on the farm came across the bakkie just after 06:00 this morning (on Monday) about 1km from the farm." He noticed that the farmer was sitting behind the wheel of the bakkie and that he was not responding."
Swart said the farmer, 58, his wife, 39, and their two daughters, aged eight and six, had been shot dead.
Their names were being withheld as they had not yet been formally identified.
"The employee went to the brother of the farmer on an adjacent farm and informed him," said Swart.
The farmer's brother phoned the police in De Aar, who arrived at the scene a short while later.
Police opened the bakkie to find "a lot of jackets" on the front seat, removed them and discovered the two girls.
Both had "wounds" to the head.
The farmer, who was in the driver's seat, also had a wound to the head and a .357 revolver was found on his lap.
The body of the farmer's wife was found under a pile of clothes in the bakkie's loading bin. She too had a wound to the head.
"It is suspected that all four people had been killed with the revolver found in the bakkie," Swart said.
Post mortems would take place in Kimberley this week.
An earlier Sapa report had mistakenly said that animals were scavenging on the some of the victims.
- SAPA
