The 77-year-old white man who died in a Bethlehem hospital on Sunday following a farm attack was severely beaten by his attackers, Free State police said.<\/p>\n
“This incident apparently happened last night [Saturday] on the farm Rondekom,” spokesperson Annelie Wrench told News24.<\/p>\n
The victim, dr. Hein Smith, was living alone on the farm.<\/p>\n
“He was visiting friends last night [Saturday] and according to what we suspect, the killers waited for him and then attacked him when he came home,” Wrench said.<\/p>\n
“They severely assaulted him and tied his hands behind his back, and left him in the veld 700m to 800m from the farm house.”<\/p>\n
The next day, Smith’s neighbour’s phoned him as they usually did to find out if he was OK, but he didn’t answer.<\/p>\n
“They went to investigate and they found him there at around 10:00. He was then taken to hospital in Bethlehem and he died in hospital.”<\/p>\n
Smith had severe wounds to his face and arms, and having been lying in the veld through the night, he likely suffered from exposure.<\/p>\n
Wrench said they suspected that three black men had been involved in the attack.<\/p>\n
No arrests have been made.<\/p>\n
Police have opened a murder and robbery investigation.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Sunday, Netcare 911 spokesperson Santi Steinmann said when paramedics arrived at the farm, Smith was still alive, but in a critical condition.<\/p>\n
“He died shortly after arrival at a local hospital,” she said.<\/p>\n
Source: News24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 77-year-old white man who died in a Bethlehem hospital on Sunday following a farm attack was severely beaten by his attackers, Free State police said. “This incident apparently happened last night [Saturday] on the farm Rondekom,” spokesperson Annelie Wrench told News24. The victim, dr. Hein Smith, was living alone on the farm. “He was … Continue reading “Latest farm murder victim savagely attacked”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1158,34,2946,447],"class_list":["post-19768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-attack","tag-crime","tag-farm-murder","tag-genocide"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19769,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19768\/revisions\/19769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}