Reyneke Gert

Age 71. The elderly couple had just celebrated their forty-seventh wedding anniversary when they traveled up to the North East of Pretoria for a special family gathering. They arrived on a Friday to visit their forty-five-year-old daughter, Thiana Gericke, on her Kameeldrift smallholding. Gert had traveled specifically to help celebrate his granddaughter Danelle Gericke’s fourteenth birthday, bringing his metalworking tools along because he wanted to personally handcraft a custom wrought-iron bed as her birthday present. The joyful family visit was shattered on Sunday, October 17, 2010, when the property was breached by unidentified criminals. The unarmed elderly man was suddenly confronted by the attackers within the smallholding homestead. During the house invasion, the perpetrators fired a fatal shot, shooting Gert dead inside the residence. In a baffling turn of events that added to the profound shock of the family, the attackers panicked immediately after firing the fatal shot and fled into the night without stealing a single item from the home.