A Pretoria grandmother tried to hang herself from a bathroom shower rail after allegedly shooting her son in the head and smothering her infant grandson to death as he lay in his pram.
The 51-year-old, who was airlifted to Unitas Hospital, was found bleeding in her luxury security estate home near Samrand by a family member and a security guard on Tuesday.
She had apparently also tried to slit her wrists.
The carnage occurred in a single-storey house in Valley View Estate.
The body of the woman’s son, who is believed to be in his late 20s and was apparently the uncle of the baby, was found on a bed in a bedroom next to the blood-smeared bathroom where the woman, who is the estate’s security director, apparently tried to kill herself.
In the passage, less than 1m away, lay the body of her 18-month-old grandson, allegedly smothered to death as he sat fastened into his pram. A living will, a birth certificate and several identity documents left lying neatly on a table in the lounge, along with a gun and bullet cartridge, are all the clues that the family and the police have to work off for now, as they try to piece together what sparked the suspected family murder.
As police cordoned off the scene and paramedics worked to stabilise the woman, neighbours stood on their pavements in shock. “It doesn’t seem real. I cannot believe that this has happened. It is just too terrible to think about.
“She is such a nice person. Always smiling and laughing. I can’t believe that something like this could happen to this family,” said neighbour, Phillimon Ramoganyaka.
Describing what he saw when he entered the house to help, the security guard, who asked not to be named, said: “It was terrible. There was so much blood in the bathroom and the bedroom.
“When we saw the lady she was hanging. She had a TV cord around her neck and was covered in blood. She looked like death. She was so white,” he said.
The guard said the man and the baby were already dead when they entered the house. “The baby looked like he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful and calm, but the man … it was too bad. You could see he suffered,” he said.
Emergency personnel described the scene as horrific.
“It was a bloodbath. The man sustained traumatic injuries to his head and neck while the woman had lacerations to her arms as well as strangulation injuries to her neck,” said an emergency officer.
A policeman, who cannot be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media, said the baby had no visible injuries. “At this stage how the infant boy died is not known,” he said.
Police spokesman Captain Thomas Mufamadi said: “We have two bodies and a very badly hurt woman. At this stage we do not know what happened here.
He confirmed the man had been shot, but said that the cause of death for the baby was still unknown.
Asked if the woman was a suspect, Mufamadi declined to comment. - Pretoria News
