A former Springbok rugby player was charged with murder yesterday after he mistook his daughter for a car thief and shot her dead in the family's driveway.
Rudi Visagie, 44, apparently assumed that his daughter Marlé, 19, was asleep when he heard her Volkswagen Golf being driven away at 5am on Sunday from their smallholding in Maggiesdal, a rural area in Mpumalanga province.
He got out of bed, took his 7.65mm pistol, and fired a shot through the bedroom window, police said.
When he went outside he discovered his daughter slumped behind the wheel.
She had been hit in the neck and was declared dead upon arrival an hour later at a clinic in the nearby town of Nelspruit.
A blood-stained present on the front passenger seat suggested Ms Visagie had been on her way to surprise her boyfriend on his birthday, without telling her parents of the plan.
"Try, just try, to imagine how they are feeling," a family friend, Susan Baird, told the South African Press Association.
In a prepared statement Ms Baird added: "It is with regret and great sadness we confirm that Marlé Visagie died ... in an unfortunate shooting accident. In darkness she was mistaken to be a car thief and was shot at by her father Rudi Visagie."
The former Springbok, who represented South Africa in five international rugby games, was released on bail on Sunday and was due to be charged with murder at a magistrate's court yesterday, a police spokesman said.
A recent spate of car thefts in the Maggiesdal area had made residents overly cautious, so when Frieda Visagie heard a noise outside just before dawn she woke her husband.
"Mrs Visagie indicated to Mr Visagie that somebody was busy stealing their daughter's car," said a police statement.
The car was about 20 metres (65ft) from the house when the former rugby player opened fire.
Police said that two vehicles had been stolen from Mr Visagie's property in recent months, adding: "One can imagine that he was very sensitive about car theft."
The tragedy could revive an emotional debate about self-defence and vigilantism in South Africa.
Official statistics show that violent crime is stabilising or decreasing, but more than 20,000 South Africans are still murdered every year and the fear of crime is rising, with 23% of people surveyed in a recent poll claiming to have been victims in the past year.
Perceptions that the police and courts are overwhelmed have fuelled frustration and resentment, particularly among whites and Indians, according to the poll.
And public sympathy for Mr Visagie may be tempered by his apparent lack of a claim to self defence.
Under South African law it is only permissible to use a firearm when a life is threatened.
The apartheid government passed laws granting the right to kill to defend property, but the new South African constitution overruled this, determining that a life was more precious than property.
Mob justice, however, sometimes deems otherwise.
Last weekend about 500 residents in Mamelodi, near Pretoria, stoned and burnt to death two men accused of murder and robbery.