A father of Pretoria is fighting for his life after he was shot Sunday October 4, 2015, during a family weekend which turned into a nightmare.
Eugene Smit (51) and his wife, Charmaine, along with their children and friends went fishing at the Roodeplaat Dam north of Pretoria for the weekend, when they were attacked by armed robbers.
Charmaine said the group was fishing until late Saturday night. Eugene and the couple’s three year old daughter went to their cabin earlier in the evening to sleep, while Charmaine with Eugene’s two sons and daughter from a previous marriage, aged 21 and 25 and 18 years old, still fished. “I got in bed about 00:15 and just pulled the blankets over me when I heard shots fired,” she said.
She heard the children crying and woke Eugene telling him there was trouble. “He jumped up and opened the door of the room. He just asked ‘what’s going on?’, and then they shot him.”
Eugene collapsed beside the bed and Charmaine sat on the bed with their daughter. The next moment there were three men in the room. Two had pistols with them. They demanded money, wallets, mobile phones, laptops, jewelry and firearms. After they searched the house for valuables, they fled with several phones, a tablet computer, car keys, wallets and cash.
Charmaine immediately jumped into her car and asked for help from guests at a wedding which just came to an end. Police and paramedics were called and Eugene was airlifted to a hospital in Pretoria.
He is being treated in the intensive care unit and is under sedation on a ventilator. “His condition is critical. They had to remove his right kidney due to internal bleeding. The bullet hit his stomach and liver and stuck in his spine. A splinter of the spine got into his spinal cord and he will need surgery to remove it,” Charmaine said in tears.
“It’s just one bullet that caused so much damage. The doctors do not really want to say what will happen next. We must see how he progresses and we take it day by day.”
Source – Maroela Media
South Africa Today – South Africa News
