Hilton Pretorius, insert, died on Wednesday morning in the Klerksdorp/Tshepong Hospital. Photos: Twitter/ Back-a-Buddy
Despite being described by his employer as someone who was “not a mad mercenary running around slitting throats and moering people”, Wernich Botha now faces a murder charge after one of the men whom he allegedly assaulted in a Klerksdorp parking lot has died.
North West police spokesperson Colonel Adéle Myburgh confirmed the passing of the 32-year-old Hilton Pretorius at the Klerksdorp/Tshepong Hospital on Wednesday morning.
Pretorius was in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator after the attack left him with a cracked skull and bleeding on the brain.
The second victim of the assault, Klerksdorp businessman PW Roos, was allegedly knocked unconscious by Botha when he tried to intervene.
His lawyer, Andre van Aswegen, told News24 he suffered a concussion and had to receive 17 stitches to the back of his head. His shoulder was also dislocated due to the fall.
ALSO READ: WATCH: KZN cop arrested after another brutal highway assault
Botha, 33, handed himself over to the police after the horrific assault which took place on Sunday, 3 September in the parking lot of the Doringkruin Spar shopping centre.
He appeared in the Klerksdorp Magistrate’s Court on 11 September where he was released on R2 000 bail.
Botha, who was initially arrested for attempted murder and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, will now faces a murder charge, said Myburgh.
Video footage of the shock incident – which insiders told Netwerk24 was allegedly triggered by a love triangle between Botha, his girlfriend and Pretorius – has been widely circulated on social media.
In one video, a woman with red hair identified as Botha’s girlfriend Natasha Fischer in various media reports, is seen running towards a blue Toyota Land Cruiser.
A man dressed in black, who has since been identified as Botha, exits the vehicle before he purposefully walks up to another man, Pretorius.
He knocks Pretorius with a forceful blow who falls to the ground where he lies unconscious and bleeding profusely from the head and face.
In a second video, a group of men tend to Pretorius while – in a bizarre twist – Botha also tries to assist by placing him in the recovery position.
Roos is seen standing behind Botha, and a scuffle breaks out between some of the men and Botha before he also punches Roos, who falls to the ground unconscious.
ALSO READ: Durban man gunned down after ‘sideswipe’ triggers deadly road rage car chase
After the assault, Fischer, who was previously in a relationship with Pretorius, told Rapport she only recently started dating Botha.
According to Fischer, prior to the incident, she and Botha were at a pub [Cadillac’s] in the shopping centre when Pretorius arrived with a friend.
The 28-year-old divorcee, who confessed the incident had rendered her an “emotional wreck”, said Botha was actually a “wonderful person” and the “complete opposite” of the man whose brutal public display of violence had claimed the life of a young father.
ALSO READ: The SA ambassador’s wife, her domestic worker and the ‘Tokyo broomstick affair’
Botha works as a maintenance manager at a secure camp for foreign nationals in Mogadishu, Somalia. He would stay there for three months and then return home for several weeks.
Anna Maria Horn, his boss at the company which acts as a security outfit at the various camps, echoed Fischer’s take on Botha.
“I’ve known him since he was a laaitie,” she told News24. “He is not a mad mercenary running around slitting throats and moering people.”
The matter has been postponed until 19 October when Botha is set to appear in court again.
NOW READ: Pub fight: Mom mourns for her son
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
