With her right forearm hanging limply by her side, its tendons severed, Sandra Coetzee’s first desperate cries for help came directly from a hole in her slashed throat.
Just metres away, in the street outside their Port Elizabeth home, the enraged attacker – Coetzee’s 50-year-old brother – continued his brutal, frenzied assault on their 78-year-old mother, Barbara Sturdy – the culmination of a bitter family feud over ownership of a Cotswold home.
It was late in the evening on Mother’s Day, May 13, when Maurice Pirzenthal launched the premeditated attack in Kanarie Street, Cotswold – first shooting Sturdy with a spear- gun before slashing 58-year- old Coetzee on the arm and across her throat and neck with a box cutter knife as she tried to protect her mother.
Pirzenthal had sat on a chair in the garden with the spear-gun, awaiting his mother’s return.
Having endured repeated assaults, Sturdy – who had just returned from church with Coetzee – died just hours before her 79th birthday.
Leaving his mother for dead near the driveway to the house and his bleeding sister where she had passed out on a grass verge, Pirzenthal calmly walked up the driveway to his garage, where he gassed himself to death in his vehicle.
Before losing consciousness, Coetzee tried to summon neighbours and made numerous attempts to call for help on her touch-screen cellphone – but her bloodied hands and fingers made this near impossible.
She was later rushed to the intensive care unit at Livingstone Hospital in a critical condition, suffering severe blood loss and a “3cm deep and 7cm long” throat laceration which narrowly missed her jugular vein.
“Saved” by the words of her daughter June, 42, who had begged her “not to go”, Coetzee “clinically died” and was subsequently resuscitated by doctors while receiving emergency treatment.
Speaking exactly a month after her mother’s birthday – from the modest living quarters in the outbuilding on the disputed property Pirzenthal had forced his mother into – a scarred and still bandaged Coetzee this week relived the series of events that tore her family apart.
North End-based Coetzee was at the Cotswold house along with her daughter and granddaughter to collect Sturdy’s belongings to begin settling her affairs.
The main house, to which Sturdy’s lodgings are attached, was still occupied by a number of Pirzenthal’s tenants on Thursday.
Pirzenthal – who according to witnesses had, in an apparent countdown, marked off the days until Mother’s Day and Sturdy’s birthday on a calendar – had embarked on his murderous mission just days before he and his tenants were due to be evicted from the house on May 30.
The six-year feud between the mother and son started when Pirzenthal bought the property from Sturdy in 2012 – with Sturdy holding a usufruct on the property, meaning she had the right to use and benefit from it, including from any proceeds.With Pirzenthal taking in tenants under an NGO he had formed and with Sturdy being forced out of the main house into cramped lodgings in serious disrepair, their relationship deteriorated, with a series of police and legal interventions.
The ugly feud, which according to tenants at the house saw Pirzenthal frequently refer to his mother as “Satan”, came to a head when Sturdy finally secured an eviction order.
“At the outset, I need to correct reports about the house which appeared in the media,” Coetzee said.
“My brother bought the house from my mother for R750,000. He then borrowed R600,000 from her to pay her for the house.
“And then he never paid any of the money back and just tried everything to force my mother out of the house.
“So yes, the house was in his name but he never paid for it and he still owes the money for it.”
Coetzee said with both her mother and brother dead, no eviction order executed and a complicated financial arrangement and debts, it was going to be a difficult estate to finalise.
Opening up about the tragedy, she said she and her other two brothers had not got on with Pirzenthal and had not been on speaking terms for a few years.
“He was just like that. He never really wanted to work or have a proper job – he seemed to do odd jobs, work at flea markets and things like that.
“He was a bit of a bad apple.
“I can’t really explain how I feel about all this. I recently became a Christian so by the second day after this, I decided to forgive him.
“I will not support him or say anything in his favour, but I have forgiven him. I asked God to deal with him. God can decide what should be done with him for doing this,” she said.
Coetzee said her mother’s body had been cremated while she had been in hospital and she and her brothers would scatter Sturdy’s ashes in the near future.
“I have no idea what has happened to my brother’s body, no idea at all.
“If there is one thing I want to say, it is a huge thanks to the Platinum Group [a section of Livingstone Hospital] and specifically to Doctors Jacobs and Tehle. They treated me exceptionally well and saved my life.
“I am very grateful for the treatment I received at the hospital.”
Police spokeswoman Colonel Priscilla Naidu said an inquest docket was being investigated as police continued to gather evidence to present to the inquest to decide on a way forward.
“I can’t really put a timeline to the inquest process.”
– Additional reporting by Tremaine van Aardt