Meyer Kayla

Age 9. Kayla Meyer, a nine-year-old schoolgirl, was brutally murdered alongside her family between 9 and 10 March 2016 during a horrific home invasion on a smallholding in Rodora, Doornfontein, just outside Randfontein on the West Rand of Gauteng. The perpetrators launched a vicious assault targeting four individuals: nine-year-old Kayla, her forty-six-year-old mother Marietjie Meyer, her mother's forty-two-year-old fiancé Kennith McCormack, and Kennith's seventy-three-year-old father Monty McCormack, who was visiting South Africa from the United Kingdom at the time. During the attack, little Kayla desperately attempted to flee from the intruders and hide inside the property's garage. The attackers caught her, bound her tightly with wire, subjected her to severe physical assault, and beat her to death with a spade. Her mother was murdered inside the house, while Kennith’s body was later discovered in a ditch outside the unfinished home he was building on the smallholding. All four victims suffered extreme, fatal blunt force trauma to their heads and bodies. The bodies were only discovered after concerned family members in the United Kingdom grew alarmed by the sudden loss of communication and requested local friends to check the property.Following an intensive investigation led by the West Rand Trio Task Team and Randfontein detectives, the South African Police Service made a breakthrough and arrested four suspects in August 2016. The legal proceedings moved to the South Gauteng High Court, where two of the primary attackers, Elvis Gobodwana and Eric Baliki, were brought to trial. In September 2017, the court handed down a definitive judgment, convicting both men and sentencing them to a total of eight life imprisonment terms for the gruesome murders, ensuring they would remain behind bars indefinitely.