Cape Town - A mom of two is fighting for her life in hospital after she was nearly beaten to death with a spade by an attacker who is known to her.
Chevonne Opperman, 25, had to be carried on a bed sheet to the ambulance “as her body was totally crushed”, neighbours say.
Emergency services were called to Batha Street in Leiden, Delft, on Sunday afternoon by frantic neighbours who said Chevonne had been nearly beaten to death with a spade.
Witnesses described in horror how the young mom’s hip and leg were a bloody pulp after the attack.
Paramedics didn’t use a stretcher, but a bed sheet to get her into the ambulance, it is believed due to the severity of her injuries.
A close family friend says Chevonne, who has a baby and a three-year-old child, had been beaten up inside the Wendy house she shared with her boyfriend.
She had run out of the house and cried for help in the street.
“She could barely speak and was in and out of consciousness,” says the friend, who asked not to be identified because she fears for her life.
“Her whole body looked like it had been crushed, but you could see that the right side of her body looked twisted by the way she was beaten. The person who did this is still at [large] and hasn’t been arrested.”
An off-duty Law Enforcement official also rushed to the scene and called for an ambulance.
The officer, who is a neighbour of Chevonne, says: “The injuries that we could see were from the hip down to her legs.
“At one stage it seemed like she thought she was five years old, and was speaking like a child of that age.”
Police did not respond to queries.
According to police spokesperson, Sergeant Noloyiso Rwexana, she was waiting for information from the Delft station commander.
Jamiel Spannenberg, the chairperson of the Delft Police Community Policing Forum, said they were aware of the incident.