Afrikaner newsman Manie Smith attacked in Bloemfontein

 

Volksblad newspaper IT-chief Manie Smith, wife Caroline injured by gun-shots from two black attackers, Fleurdal, Bloemfontein home Nov 23 2010

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BLOEMFONTEIN. FLEURDAL. Volksblad newspaper IT-chief Manie Smith and wife Caroline were taken to hospital with gunshot-wounds after an attack by at least two armed black men on Nov 23 2010. Nothing was robbed. Police still insist on calling it a  ‘house-robbery’ however - and are not, apparently, even bothering to investigate attempted murder charges.

 

Their daughter Jehané (22) screamed loudly when discovering armed black men in their living room when she went to drink water in the kitchen at around 1:15 am. She  ran to her parents’ bedroom. Mrs Smith said the two blacks who stood at their bedroom door both were dressed in black and wore white gloves. 

Manie Smith said: “I didn’t even think about it, I just stormed towards them and started yelling.“ The black men fired shots towards them but Smith ran after them and delivered a hefty fist-blow to one of the gunmen. “I hit him sideways and he slipped and fell, breaking our glass table before running from the front door.’

Mrs Smith and son Jaco, 24, who had followed Manie into the living room and hearing the shots, feared that he may have been shot dead. Instead they found him very angered, yelling at them to ‘release the big dogs’. Only after the attackers had fled into the night did the Smith couple realise they’d been shot: Manie in an upper-right leg and left-hand, Mrs Smith in the left-knee and right-foot. She still managed to joke about it: “they took off my calluses,’ she quipped from her hospital-bed at Life Rosepark Hospital, where they were scheduled for surgery to remove the bullets that night. Before his surgery he briefly went home to replace all the locks on their home. Apparently the attackers gained access by destroying locks on the doors.

Lt-col Annelie Wrensch of the SAPS said they were investigating ‘a case of house-robbery.’ She said nothing about attempted murder. The SAPS does not like to put such charges on their annual statistics if they can help it. Nobody was arrested. http://www.volksblad.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Volksbladman-vrou-geskiet-20101123