Part 4: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack

Ronnie Lombard was laying in the doorway, blood covering his back and his arm. She asked him where his gun was and he informed her that one of the attackers had it. She pulled her wounded father into the house and he told her that she must try to stop the bleeding. She turned him around and placed a cloth over his wound, before running to the bathroom to get a towel to place on Ronnie’s arm.

With her husband and father both bleeding profusely, Karlien van Rooyen scrambled desperately between the two as the sound of gunshots still rang out around the house.

With all the strength she could muster, she continues to tell the court of her horrific ordeal…

ALSO READ: Part 3: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack

“I heard something falling,” she states. “I realised it was Billy…”

Ronnie told her to go to Billy and she discovered that the sound she had heard was Billy’s legs as they fell from the couch.

“Ek gaan dit nie maak nie,” Billy told her, and started grinding his teeth. Distraught, Karlien tried to open his mouth to administer CPR, determined to save her husband’s life.

Reliving the heartbreak of Billy’s final moments, Karlien tells the court that, at this point, she heard a gargling noise emanating from his throat and CPR wasn’t working.

“I begged him to hold on,” she sobs. “I begged him to stay alive. I told him I would try to get help…”

“One of our workers, Petrus, came and I asked him to get the keys for the vehicle. I knew we had to get Billy to the hospital.”

ALSO READ: Part 2: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack

Petrus, who Karlien later describes fondly as “Billy’s right-hand”, returned with the keys and Karlien ran out to the car and drove it to the door, where she, with Petrus’ assistance loaded Billy, who was no longer conscious at this point, into the car.

By this time, other farmers had arrived at the scene of utter devastation for the Van Rooyen family and Billy’s father, Lodewyk van Rooyen, was among them, battered and bleeding from the attack.

ALSO READ: PART 1: Karlien van Rooyen’s chilling account of #VanRooyenFarmAttack

In Karlien’s recollection of the events that followed, Ronnie Janse van Rensburg, who was Billy’s sister’s fiancé at the time, drove the Toyota Prado containing the dying farmer and family man, Billy van Rooyen, and his devastated wife, Karlien, to Glückstadt, where they met with the ambulance.

“They asked me how long he’d been like that,” she recalls, revisiting the agonising memory of the loss of her husband. “I screamed, ‘Please help him!’”

A barely audible sob is heard from one of the women in court, who is there in support of the Van Rooyen family, as Karlien’s next statement, with sorrowful finality, fills the courtroom, “They declared him dead…”