Rifle triggers require a slow, gentle squeeze for accuracy. Instead of pulling a rifle trigger back suddenly, one should gradually add pressure at the same rate, with the sights correctly aligned, until the rifle fires.
On June 30, 2009, when Warren Vorster grabbed his hunting rifle and aimed it at the roof of the wooden Zozo house in his backyard, he had a grandmother begging him to protect her grandchild, his wife and two small children in the house behind him, and the memory of being tied up and robbed at gunpoint on the same property during a previous attack.
Not only did the rifle not have sights, but Vorster – with adrenalin coursing through his veins and the sound of the child screaming in his ears – could not have pulled the trigger back slowly and gently.
The bullet travelled below the line of the roof, blasted through a window, and struck 12-year-old Kgopotso Ramolefe in the forehead.
Tragically, Vorster killed the child he was trying to protect – his domestic worker’s grandson and a boy he considered a member of his family.
On Thursday, almost two years after the incident, Vorster looked ashen as the Johannesburg High Court convicted him of culpable homicide and handed down a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years, and 300 hours of community service spread over a year.
Having misunderstood the sentence, he was led down to the cells to have his fingerprints taken, thinking he would be spending the next three years in prison.
But Judge Geraldine Borchers said in her judgment that prison was no place for a man who had acted in haste and fear to protect a child, against the backdrop of three previous intrusions onto his property, and who had carried a heavy burden of guilt since the day of the incident.
She said: “I have never before seen an accused person as devastated and remorseful as (Vorster) is.”
On June 30, 2009, about four hours before the shooting, Vorster was called back to his house because an intruder had been in the neighbourhood.
No intruders were found on Vorster’s property that day, and no one will ever know why Kgopotso started screaming for his grandmother and bolted the door of the Zozo house from the inside.
Vorster has since been the victim of another attack, in September last year, during which he and his wife were again tied up and robbed in front of their children.
He said on Thursday that he was anxious on his property.
“You sit at home every night, outside on the veranda.
“You hear the dogs bark and you’re suddenly alert. You think: ‘Oh my God, are they back?’.”
The family no longer have any contact with Kgopotso’s grandmother, Elizabeth Ramolefe. Both Ramolefe and Kgopotso’s mother Florence – who subsequent to Kgopotso’s death suffer from high blood pressure and other ailments – were absent for Thursday’s sentencing and could not be reached for comment. - The Star