The well-known murdered Estcourt farmer Malcolm “Stick” Green (69) uttered his last words to his son moments before succumbing to a single gunshot wound inflicted during a farm attack in the early hours of January 5, 2015.
Green was wounded during a confrontation with four men who had forced their way into his farmhouse.
As he lay prostrate and bleeding, his attackers fled with electronic appliances in his bakkie, which was later found abandoned near Ladysmith.
Clutching his bleeding gunshot wound, Green called his wife, Ruth, who was on holiday at the coast and who raised the alarm.
After he slipped into unconsciousness, a team of medics tried desperately to resuscitate him for nearly two hours before he was declared dead on the lounge floor of his farmhouse.
Seven years ago, his cousin David Green was also slain in a farm attack at Estcourt.
Bloodstains stretched from Green’s bedroom through a passage and into his lounge, showing the path he struggled along to where he finally collapsed.
Ruth recounted the frantic minutes after she was roused by a call from her husband.
“I got a call from our guard and it took a while to make out what he was trying to say. When he gave the phone to Malcolm, he told me that he had been shot and asked me to call the police,” she said.
After Green raised the alarm, she called her husband back.
“The second time I phoned him, his voice sounded panicked and it sounded like he was starting to lose his grip. I was frantic after I heard the tenor of his voice and I started to get anxious. I had no idea where he had been shot or how bad it was until after he was gone,” she said.
“We still don’t know how things unfolded. My son, Stafford, arrived and was trying to stop the bleeding before the paramedics arrived. He just lost too much blood.
“We have a guard here because there has been so much theft, but that is the case with any farm; speak to any of our neighbors and they will tell you.
“He was so special to me. He wrote children’s stories for his grandchildren,” she said amid tears.
“I want the death penalty for those who did this, if I am speaking honestly.”
The couple had been married for 45 years.
Green was born in Estcourt and was well known in the farming community.
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