'He shot my best friend'

By Lucia Swart-Walters and Mariëtte Pool Friday 19 March 2010

He was standing with her back to him when the shot rang out. She lifted her hand to the burning pain in her neck and felt the warm, sticky blood. The thought flashed through her mind, ‘‘My husband has shot me!’’

Daleen Potgieter turned and saw her best friend trying to prevent her husband from firing again.

‘‘Please, Manie, stop it,’’ Daleen pleaded. Then a second shot echoed through the restaurant and she watched in horror as her friend collapsed with a bloody patch spreading on her neck.

Then a third shot went off and Daleen felt the bullet strike her in the back.

As her two children screamed her husband fled. The police would apprehend him the following day.

The tragedy happened two weeks ago. Last week he finally signed the divorce papers. Daleen was at last free of the man who’d virtually imprisoned her for years with his obsessive jealousy and made her live in fear.

But how tragic it was that her best friend had to pay with her life for his obsession.

Not even in her darkest moments could Daleen (37) have imagined her 51-year-old husband’s jealousy would end in a bloodbath.

Read the full article in the latest issue of YOU.

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Comments (2)

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Melanie Muir
2010/03/25 03:25:45 PM

I agree with freefromabuse. I was in a very volatile marriage at a young age, he tried to stab me, shoot me etc. He also told me if I ever divorced him he would kill me on the steps of the Supreme Court Building. I left him, just with the clothes I had on my back and the clothes my son had on his back. We ran, we were frightened but we were free. I got a new job, my son was in a new school and I filed for divorce. When my ex-husband asked what day it would go through, I gave him the wrong date, as I was still scared of him. It went through and I had no more worries. A few years later I had a call from his father to say he was in hospital - he was paralised as he had opened his mouth to the wrong person and was hit over the head. I went to see him, but, not to feel sorry for him but to gloat. He could not hurt me ever again. In the end he got his punishment. My son and I walked out of that hospital, that was in 1991, neither my son or I have heard from him, we have moved to the UK and I have remarried.
freefromabuse
2010/03/23 02:20:58 PM

Never judge a situation until you've walked a mile in someone's shoes. I did. My mile was 10 years long. Then he left me. I was set free even though I didn't realise it at the time. Now his daughter is involved with exactly the same kind of person as he is. He can see what it does to her. Before you judge, pray and thank God you don't even understand this.