mrselfdestrukt's Journal: News Flash: Daughter saves mom in bloodbath.

04/01/2006 09:04 - (SA)

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Makhado - A farmer's wife saved her elderly mother's life on Monday by pulling her inside their house, away from an armed man, but was herself cold-bloodedly shot and killed by the attacker.

Etna van Heerden, 53, of Kromdraai farm on the Ledig road about 3 km from Makhado, Limpopo, died minutes after being shot in the chest.

A still-shocked Ona van Heerden sen, 75, recounted on Tuesday how her daughter and only child had pulled her through the back door into the house, but was herself shot.

"She'd fallen to the floor and I wiped the blood from her mouth.

"I told Dries we must try to lift her up, but she was covered in so much blood that she slipped out of our hands.

"This morning, we had to use a hosepipe to clear the blood from the house."

Ona lives in a flat adjoining the house of her son-in-law and daughter.

Nothing was stolen

The grieving granny said: "One just cannot believe it - they just shoot people dead nowadays."

The killer did not steal a thing from the house. Etna and her husband, Dries, have lived on the fruit farm for the past 10 years.

She worked at Sanlam insurance in Makhado.

Transvaal Agricultural Union SA manager Marie Helm said on Tuesday that farmers were being mowed down in Limpopo.

"It wasn't robbery, they didn't take even a cent, not even a blade of grass," she said.

The drama began on Monday about 19:30 when Ona walked from her flat to the farmhouse for supper.

"I heard the dogs barking furiously. Etna opened the back door and the next moment we heard someone running behind us in the garden," said the mother.

Etna pulled her mother into the house and a shot was fired. Then the attacker began kicking the dogs.

Ona said: "When I looked again, Etna was standing in front of the sink with blood pouring out of her mouth.

"I asked her: 'My child, where did they shoot you?' but she could no longer speak. She just pointed to her chest," she wept.

Dries ran into the kitchen from the front of the house where he had been sitting on the stoep.

He said: "I didn't know what to think. I ran back and tried to open my safe to get a firearm, but couldn't."

He phoned the police.

Grief-stricken Dries stood in front of Monday night's dishes in the kitchen and pointed to the spot where his wife had died.

"We were just about to eat. The chicken and rice were ready, and then this happened."

The couple had been married for 32 years and returned last week from a fortnight's holiday in Mozambique.

'Farm murders are well-planned'

"Etna enjoyed it tremendously and wanted us to go back with friends in April," said Dries.

The couple's 26-year-old daughter, Carien Wasserman, lives in Makhado.

Transvaal Agricultural Union chairperson Dries Joubert said on Tuesday that farm murders were well-planned: "They are carried out violently and cold-bloodedly."

He said information indicated the firearm used to murder Etna might have been stolen during a December farm attack in Levubu.