Oct 11 2008 -- The murdered Afrikaans missionary Rianna Henning (31) with her husband Abri, children Marcelle (2) and Anika (10 months).
She was murdered execution-style on Oct 10 at a Honeydew smallholding yesterday-evening while the Fisherman's Village Christian Centre was being robbed by a large group of black men at gunpoint.
The Henning couple had joined the Christian charity group on the Honeydew smallholding only six weeks ago and also lived there with the children.
The centre - also a multiracial refuge for homeless, poor Christians - was founded four years ago at the Honeydew smallholding by pastor Linda Patterson (59).
It is believed that a large group of armed black men had managed to get inside the compound just as a group of women had gone through the gates after a prayer session at 10pm.
Mrs Patterson's eldest daughter Heather Costaras says her mother was attacked first and forced into the house by a man with a handgun.
Another group of men also attacked Mrs Patterson's youngest daugher Suzanne, 33 who was working on her computer on the second floor of the mission house.
The two women were tied up and their heads covered up with towels while the mission was looted for valuables.
However the Henning couple then arrived with their two children at the centre where they live, after they returned from another prayer session elsewhere.
They ran the bell - and Mrs Patterson was trying hard to warn the couple by telling them: "We cannot open the gate for you now, please go away', while one of the men held a gun to her head.
She was hoping that the couple would understand that something was amiss and call the police. However instead, Abri got out of the car and walked to the nearby hut of a Malawian priest, only named as Ernest.
He asked Ernest to open the gate - and ran smack-dab into the rest of the robbers while they were loading loot into a bakkie. With Abri now also held at gun-point Mrs Henning got behind the wheel of the family car and tried to chase off with her two little girls but instead got into reverse in her fear and backed up into a tree.
"One of the attackers then simply walked to her and shot her right in the forehead, between the eyes,' Mrs Patterson said.
Meanwhile Mrs Patterson managed to push the emergency button in the hallway before the two women locked themselves up in the bathroom. They said they could hear 'screeching tyres, a crash and a shot.' The attackers then fled on foot into the veld with only two cellphones and a laptop computer - and the salaries of the workers.
Mr Henning meanwhile had called the mission's security service, ADT, while chasing with his shot wife and terrified little children to the Wilgeheuwel Hospital. However she was declared dead on arrival. Mrs Patterson said she is being targetted frequently by armed men at the mission.
No-one has been arrested of course.
Honeydew -- a rural area with many subsistence-smallholdings often bought as retirement farmlets by pensioned-off Afrikaner mineworkers -- resorts under the Muldersdrift police station.
In the year up to March 2008, there were 61 reported violence-related deaths: (17 murders + 44 culpible homicides); 5 abductions, 38 attempted murders, 169 armed assaults, 168 armed robberies, 14 carjackings and 41 robberies of families inside their residential properties; as well as 308 reported burglaries at homes.
http://www.saps.gov.za/statistics/reports/crimestats/2008/_provinces/gauteng/pdf/muldersdrift.pdf
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