Cape Town - A Cape Town man is on the run after gunning down a woman, her brother and a boarder who lived at their house in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, late on Thursday night.
Police have launched a manhunt for the man, who is close to the family.
It is believed that he opened fire on the three as they sat in a wendy house in Vesuvius Street about 11pm, following a heated argument.
Katrina Jansen told the Cape Argus of her anguish after hearing the shots that killed her two children.
Earlier today an emotional Jansen cried as she recalled hearing the shots that rang out before she found the bodies of her son, Donald Natus, 30, her daughter Ellen Silvister, 30, and a boarder, Jonathan Afrikaner, 27, who had been staying in a wendy house behind their home.
Jansen said she had been asleep in the main house and woke with a fright when she heard shouts from her daughter, who was in the wendy house. She jumped out of bed and called her eldest daughter to help.
Heading to the back yard she heard the voices of her daughter and a man known to the family arguing, but she couldn’t hear what the argument was about. A short while later her son, Natus, tried to run out of the wendy house.
“I heard Ellen shouting ‘Mummy phone the police’, and by the time I reached the wendy house I heard three shots going off.”
Jansen saw the body of her son first and could not bear to walk into the wendy house to look at the others.
No one saw where the gunman fled.
“To lose two children in one day… it’s difficult,” she said wiping her tears.
Provincial police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk confirmed that three people had been shot at about 11pm on Thursday.
He said the bodies of two men, aged 27 and 30 and a woman aged 30 were found.
“Police are currently looking for a male suspect who is known to them.
“The circumstances surrounding the triple murder are still unknown at this stage,” Van Wyk said.
Relatives and neighbours gathered at the house early this morning to offer support before Jansen left for the mortuary to identify the bodies of her children.
Jansen said that her daughter and her son had been threatened by the man before and that she had also laid a charge against him at the police station recently.
Cape Argus