Shot from behind in farm attack
2009-09-28 08:05
Pretoria – A 55-year-old woman was shot dead from behind over the weekend, as she was presumably trying to escape to a guest bathroom to hide from attackers during a robbery at a smallholding east of Pretoria.
Isabel Schonken's businessman husband Lars, 56, was shot in the torso during the attack near Klipkop at 02:00 on Saturday.
Lars's skull and wrist were fractured when the robbers assaulted him and hit him with a pistol. He is currently recovering in the Little Company of Mary hospital in Groenkloof, Pretoria.
Isabel is the second person to be murdered during an armed farm attack in this area in 24 hours.
In the early morning hours on Friday, 18-year-old Sheun Anderson was shot dead during a farm attack on a smallholding at Wag-'n-bietjieskop, outside Bronkhorstspruit.
Sheun's mother, Jeanine Anderson, could only watch as her 47-year-old husband, Robert -the owner of a construction company - was shot twice in the stomach before her son was shot and killed.
Cut through electric fence
Meanwhile, Isabel's sister, Héléne Rumsey, 52, who lives a stone's throw from the Schonkens, said the robbers had cut through an electric fence which stretches all around the smallholding. They were able to get into the house through an open sliding door.
"They attacked Lars in the bedroom," Rumsey related. "It seems as if my sister had fallen asleep in front of the television in the living room and woke up when they shot Lars.
"Shortly thereafter she was shot through the heart.
"The robbers tried to shoot Lars in the heart as well, but luckily it was only a flesh wound," she added.
Lars lost consciousness after being shot. When he came to, shortly thereafter, he fetched his pistol from the safe and shot one of the robbers.
According to Rumsey, the robbers stole her sister's handbag and cellphone and her brother-in-law's laptop.
Lars phoned his daughter, Sonja Smit, and her husband, who also live on the smallholding.
Covered in blood
Smit's husband, who doesn't want his first name mentioned, found his mother-in-law in the bathroom and his father-in-law in the living room, covered in blood.
"She was already dead," he said. He took his father-in-law to the hospital.
Rumsey said the couple's youngest daughter, 17-year-old Alma, wasn't at home during the attack.
Police spokesperson, Monique Vermeulen, said police followed a trail of blood to a gravel road near the smallholding, where the suspects possibly climbed into a vehicle and fled.
The police have asked doctors and medical personnel to be on the look-out for a man with a bullet wound.
According to Rumsey, robbers tried to break into her house two weeks ago, but the alarm was triggered and they fled.