SUPPLIED

Velephi Biyela

“The piercing cries of her children as she lay there dying are a picture that only God can help me forget.”

High school teacher and pastor, Velephi Biyela was lying on the road being held by her two blood-spattered children when another pastor from their church arrived to help. She had been shot in front of her children, 10 pupils and another teacher when two men hijacked her truck in the Ntambanana area, Empangeni, on Monday.

Pastor Ernest Nzuza, of the Letterrain Church International, said he had been called at 6.40am by Biyela’s distraught husband, Muzi, who is also a pastor.

“Muzi was already at work in Richards Bay. He asked me to go to his home because his wife had been shot,” he said.

Nzuza said he rushed there and on the road near the Biyela home, where he was greeted by the cries for help from her two children, aged 18 and 20, who were covered in her blood. She had been shot once in the neck.

Nzuza said Biyela’s daily routine was to pick up schoolchildren and the teacher in her Hyundai H100 truck before going back to fetch her children, who went to the same school where she taught.

Pastor Muzi Biyela talks about his late wife, Velephi, who was gunned down by hijackers on Monday morning.

INLSA

“She was shot as she was about to pick them up and they saw everything. Apparently the two men had approached her car as she was driving towards her children. She had then rolled down the window to ask where she should drive as they were in front of her vehicle,” he said.

One of the men pulled out a gun and shot her.

“The same man then dragged her out of the vehicle while the children and the teacher quickly got out, leaving behind everything, including school fees that some of the children had been carrying. The two made off with the vehicle,” Nzuza said.

Biyela was carried to Nzuza’s car and her son had jumped in as they rushed to hospital.

“We were only a few kilometres away from the hospital when we saw the ambulance and stopped. Paramedics declared her dead.

“That moment was the hardest of all. Her son was there – how do you look that child in the eye after they have just lost their mother in such a horrible way?”

When Muzi arrived he heard the news and it broke him, said Nzuza.

“My son had called and said his mom had been shot. A colleague drove me home and the whole way there I thought that I would see her alive in hospital, but she was dead in the car. I was in complete shock.

“The police came and took pictures and then we waited for the mortuary van.

“I had spoken to her in the morning before I left for work and nothing told me that would be the last time I saw my wife alive again.

“She was making tea for our 13-year-old son when I left. It is really hard,” he said.

Muzi said that because of the trauma their children had experienced, he had taken all three for counselling.

“I will miss my wife dearly. She was everything to this family. I will miss her love and respect for me. We were married for 21 years and right now it is really hard to believe that I will never see her again and that my children saw their mother being killed,” he said.

Muzi and Nzunza commended the police work which led to the arrest of two suspects and the recovery of the stolen vehicle on Monday afternoon.

“The police have been so helpful in this case and knowing that the two suspects are behind bars gives us peace. They took away a wonderful woman of God and it is really painful for everybody, but God is there,” said Nzuza.

mpume.madlala@inl.co.za