Liefde en Vrede family grieves son (21) killed on Kliprivier Drive crash
Just days after his birthday, Eric Nortman died in a motorbike crash — now his grieving family faces the heartbreak of a disappearing memorial and unanswered questions.
Eric Nortman of Liefde en Vrede died just 10 days after celebrating his 21st birthday in a motorbike crash on Kliprivier Drive at the N12 East on-ramp on December 11, 2024.
According to his mother, Tersia de Beer Vermeulen, he was riding home to shower and get ready for work at Oasis Plumbing Supplies, where he held a ‘peace job’ alongside his father Leon Vermeulen. He was also planning his return to carnival work in North America.
The desperate search
The night before, heavy rain had forced Eric to sleep over at a friend’s house.
“We stay in a complex and he did not have a remote to get in, and he knew his dad wakes up at 03:30 every morning to get ready for work,” Tersia recalls.
“He phoned me and told me he would come the next morning to shower and get ready for work.”
When he did not arrive, the family’s 360Life app, a safety tool Nortman installed on all their phones, showed no movement.
“From 4:30 we phoned and sent messages but no luck,” she said.
Using the app’s last ping, Leon found Nortman’s bike and a red Porsche at the scene; when he asked police where his son was; he was met with, “My condolences to you, sir.”
Eric’s body lay in the road covered in a yellow plastic sheet from just before 04:00 until after 09:00 when the forensic team removed him.
Questions at a broken intersection
Tersia told Comaro Chronicle the traffic lights at that busy junction have been out of order for over nine months.
According to the Porsche driver, Nortman came from the Galito’s side while the car emerged from under the bridge.
The data from the 360Life shows he was travelling only 56 km/h when his front tyre struck the pavement.
“Nothing of what is seen in the pictures my husband took at the scene makes sense of what the driver of the Porsche is saying,” Tersia says.
The collision remains under investigation.
A memorial that keeps vanishing
On 21 December 2024, Nortman’s friends from church, where he served as a youth leader, helped the family erect a simple wooden cross at the crash site.
Working on a more permanent tribute, they installed steel cross embedding with Nortman’s name, photo, and his helmet in cement.
The memorial went up on February 8, only to be vandalised four days later.
Undeterred, they erected a third wooden cross on March 16 – only to see it removed by March 18.
“The person doing this has no idea how it feels as a mother,” Tersia says. “It feels he is still there looking at us.”
A mother’s plea to remember
“Eric was the heart of the family,” Tersia says.
“He always put his needs aside to help others. He was our household rock and puller.”
Loved throughout his community, he returned from three years working carnivals in America on September 18, 2024, and was planning to go back.
“I still cry every day over him. He had a bright future ahead of him. I am struggling at work, I cannot focus. Some days I feel like ending it all so I can be with him, but I am trying to hold it together, though it is so hard. I want his name to be remembered.”
Determined, Tersia, Leon, and their daughter vow to rebuild the cross again and again.
“We are going to put another one there and will not stop until the person removing them stops taking them down,” she declares.
“The person doing this must have a guilty conscience and cannot handle it to see his name and photo. I drive past four crosses for a year and no one has taken them down. Why only the one of my son?”
Through her sorrow and persistence, Tersia hopes Eric’s memory will stand firm – just like the cross at the roadside he loved to travel.
City responds: Contracted workers may remove crosses
Rumours have begun circulating that roadside memorials may be illegal in the City of Ekurhuleni.
To find out, the Alberton Record reached out to the city for clarification. City spokesperson Zweli Dlamini responded: “The said road belongs to the province.
Firstly, the city would like to sympathise with the family and the loss of their loved one. When the province is cutting grass, part of that contract is to do litter picking, by removing objects not considered as part of provincial road furniture-and a cross would form part of that item in the Bill of Quantities (BoQ).
“With that being said, as much as we may see crosses on some roads that have been unremoved, it is an oversight from the contractor whose instruction is to remove any foreign objects on the road reserve.
“My apologies for removing the cross on behalf of the workforce who are instructed to execute it,” explained Dlamini.
