What played out in the next moments was the beginning of a nightmare that would unimaginably shatter their lives and will likely haunt the surviving family members for the rest of their days.
“I heard a loud noise,” she recalls, “followed by a ‘ta-ta-ta’ sound and then just gunshots. My father said it was gunshots and we fled into the house.”
“My first instinct was my children…” says Karlien, who went on to describe how she ran to their room. Their eldest son was awake and asked her what all the noise was. She told him that she didn’t know but, no matter what, they were not to leave their room under any circumstances.
ALSO READ: PART 1: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack
Her next instinct was to find her husband. She started turning off the lights inside the house and frantically began the search for Billy.
Karlien went to the front porch where Billy had exited before the hail of bullets engulfed their home. There she saw him, laying on his stomach in a pool of blood, his face resting on his arms.
“The blood was coming out of his back like small fountains,” she remembers, her face rife with the emotional impact of that painful recollection. “I kneeled down beside him and placed my hands on his back…”
At this point, Billy was still conscious and pleaded with his wife, “Kry my in die huis. Kry my in die huis.”
Before Karlien could respond, she looked up and saw one of the gunmen appear before her.
ALSO READ: Part 3: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack
