North West - “Shoot the big one, shoot the big one.” The “big one” was Corrie Sanders, and moments after the armed robber uttered those words, the former world heavyweight boxing champion was shot in the abdomen.
On Monday, the Sanders family were trying to understand why robbers had shot the 46-year-old father in cold blood as he lay defenceless on the floor, with his arm around his daughter.
Sanders’s final acts on Saturday evening, said his family, were to protect his children, not just from armed criminals, but from the trauma of seeing their father dying.
When the robbers burst into the Thatch Haven Country Lodge near Brits, he took his 15-year-old daughter Marinique by the wrist and got her to lie down on the floor next to him.
Sanders then told her to play dead as three of the robbers fired shots into the floor next to the heads of some of the patrons and threatened them with knives.
One of those bullets struck Sanders in an arm, before piercing his side and entering his abdomen, said his former wife Sunette.
She had heard one of the robbers shout “Shoot the big one”.
Later, as paramedics were about to rush him to Kalafong hospital, Sanders’s final words to Sunette were not to take the children to hospital as he didn’t want to distress them.
“He was in a lot of pain. He said ‘bring them to the hospital tomorrow’,” said Sunette.
Sanders died hours later, at 4am on Sunday.
“He was protecting her and they shot him. Why they shot him, no one knows. Maybe it was because he was the closest to them,” said Sunette.
On Monday, provincial police spokesman Brigadier Thulani Ngubane said police were still searching for the four armed men responsible for the robbery. He could not say if the thugs were responsible for other robberies.
“That we will only know once we have caught them,” he said.
Sanders’s brother Mike said the former boxer was standing with his daughter at the entrance to the boma when the robbers appeared.
The family had gathered at the Thatch Haven Country Lodge to celebrate Sanders’s nephew’s 21st birthday.
“I believe they shot Corrie as he lay on the ground,” said Mike. He added that three of the robbers had walked among the guests, shooting in the air and firing into the floor. Some of the bullets had struck just centimetres from the heads of some of the patrons. They then collected cellphones, handbags and wallets.
One of the guests had kicked his cellphone under the table, said Mike.
“When they searched him and didn’t find anything, one of them said ‘Shoot him if he doesn’t have anything’. He didn’t shoot him; they kicked him,” said Mike.
They also threatened to shoot Sanders’s parents.
Another guest ended up with shrapnel wounds to one of his legs from bullet fragments.
Mike said he believed that at least 30 shots were fired during the hold-up.
The Star