Cape Town - The murder of Belgian Jurgen Rombouts outside his Strand home was not a robbery or revenge killing, but an assassination, says a relative.
The relative, who wanted to remain anonymous, visited the Salt River Mortuary last Tuesday to identify the 27-year-old’s body.
He described the injuries as “too precise” to have been anything but the result of an organised hit.
Rombouts had reportedly been sitting in his black BMW outside his home on Friday, April 25, waiting for his fiancée, Chanelle Victor, to close the gate to their rented home, when a red Nissan crashed into his car.
A man emerged from the Nissan and fired six shots at Rombouts, killing him instantly before speeding away and then setting fire to his car a few hundred metres down the road.
According to the relative, Victor has been taken into protective custody by police. She last visited the house on Monday, April 28, when she emptied it of their personal belongings.
While the relative remains certain that it was a hit, he is not sure why Rombouts - who works on the ground for Swiss Air at the Cape Town International Airport - would have been targeted.
“I didn’t know Jurgen was in any type of trouble. If we had known he was being threatened we would have taken him away,” he said.
He recalled that there had been a burglary at Rombouts’s home recently, where four white men had broken in and fired shots at police responding to the triggered alarm.
Someone who may hold clues to the Belgian’s death is Dimitri Sarenok. The 50-year-old Russian was the landlord of the property Rombouts rented, but has been missing since the murder.
Sarenok has been linked to an abandoned boat found near Glencairn on Thursday. The NSRI, which responded to calls about the boat’s appearance on the rocky shore, said pistol ammunition and a bottle of liquor were found on board. The key was still in the ignition.
Police spokesman Colonel Tembinkosi Kinana said Sarenok was wanted for questioning in connection with Rombouts’s murder.
But by Sunday night, the Russian had not been found.
Cape Argus