Cape Town - One of the victims in the Hawston shooting in which a top cop was nearly killed, was on his way to lay charges of assault against the suspect when he was murdered.
Acting Hermanus station commander Colonel Rounita Burgess is still fighting for her life after the attack at the Steppies Rally held at the Hawston camping site over the weekend.
Her 18-year-old daughter, Randy Burgess, and friend Rudi Salo, 42, were killed in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Read: Man arrested after biker rally shooting
One other person was also injured, while a fifth person escaped the deadly bullets unharmed.
Police arrested a 26-year-old suspect later on Sunday.
Gerald Kemp, president of Lee Riders, the club which Rudi belonged to, says the deceased was sitting on a stool when the suspect started pointing in his face.
Kemp said: “Rudi stood up and said he mustn’t do that. He shoved Rudi and Rudi shoved him back.”
During the altercation, Rudi was allegedly hit with a glass, causing a cut above his eyebrow.
Read: Two killed at biker rally
Kemp said the glass also cut him on the arm and he left to get it bandaged at the paramedics’ station, where Rudi joined him.
“Rudi said he was going to the police station to lay a charge against [the suspect], ‘want die man het nie die reg om my so te attack nie’ (because the man had no right to attack me like that).”
He also said Rudi and the suspect did not argue over rent money as was reported in some papers.
“Rudi didn’t want to be friends with him and [the suspect] could not take it,” said Kemp.
He added that Rudi’s neighbour, Lynden Julies, offered him a lift and they left.
“I wasn’t even in the tent yet when I heard bang bang bang, a couple of shots,” Kemp recalled.
At that stage they didn’t know Rudi was shot and returned to the tent where another man had allegedly also been shot.
But Captain FC van Wyk said there is no record of this man: “Nothing is or was reported to SAPS.”
Rudi, Colonel Burgess, her daughter, Lynden and another person were all in the car when the suspect allegedly drew a gun and walking around the car, fired shots through the windows.
Lynden, who was shot in the arm and leg, drove to Hermanus Provincial Hospital where Rudi was declared dead on arrival.
Randy, who passed matric last year, died a short while later.
The colonel was taken to another hospital where she underwent an operation to remove two bullets from her head.
The suspect, who has a one-year-old child with Randy’s twin sister, is expected to appear in the Hermanus Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday on charges of murder and attempted murder.
Daily Voice