Headlines get criminals caught
2003-09-02 08:00
Johannesburg - Criminals who commit violent crimes are arrested swiftly only when their terrible deeds make the headlines on television and in newspapers, says a woman who saved her grandchildren, but saw her husband being mowed down by gunmen.
Meisie Bronkhorst and her husband Willie were taking their two young grandchildren home to Rustenburg when their car broke down on the N1 near Soweto.
The children had been in Margate, KwaZulu-Natal, visiting their grandparents.
A man, known only as Gerhard, stopped to help the the pensioners. A few minutes later, two gunmen approached and grabbed Gerhard's cellphone.
"One of them was standing on my side of the car and held a gun to my head," Bronkhorst recalled.
"I knew he was going to shoot. I shoved my two-year-old granddaughter from my lap, pressed my four-year-old grandson down on her and covered them with my body.
"The man fired four shots at us."
'Shot to pieces'
The second robber fired six shots at her husband, who was standing outside the car, before they fled.
Willie Bronkhorst died two days later in a hospital in Soweto.
"My husband was shot to pieces. His death didn't even make the news. The men emptied their guns on him. Murder remains murder, no matter how cruel it is. My husband suffered just as much," said Meisie Bronkhorst, referring to the death of Janine Drennen, 24, her daughter Kayla, 1, and her future mother-in law Hester Rawstorne, 52.
The two women and child were kidnapped in Sunnyside in Pretoria on July 31. Their murder made headlines countrywide.
Police arrested four suspects after five days and a fifth suspect a week later.
However, six weeks have passed since Willie Bronkhorst was shot. Police Captain Mbazima Shiburi said nobody has been arrested and the investigation was being hampered by the fact that the suspects were "unknown".
"The lives of so many people are destroyed by crime. We hardly take note of them. My husband's death didn't make the news. Are criminals arrested merely because the story was broadcasted on television?" Bronkhorst asked.