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Carel
Johannes DELPORT
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics:
Argument with his father about the sale of three calves
Status:
Sentenced
to 39 years in prison on October 29, 1992
Carel Johannes "Kallie" Delport
is a South African mass murderer who killed nine people, including his
father, and wounded 19 others in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, South
Africa on January 20, 1992. He was subsequently arrested and sentenced
to 39 years in prison.
Life
Delport suffered from meningitis as a child, was
declared unfit for military service for unknown reasons, and worked on
his father Marthiens' farm in Allerkraal, a place outside of
Ladysmith, earning R300 a month. He reportedly had a history of mental
illness[8] and was twice charged with and acquitted of manslaughter
after shooting two cattle thieves. His family repeatedly asked his
father to not allow him owning any firearms, but he declined their
requests. Delport had 13 licensed firearms at the time of the shooting
and was frequently asked to participate in wildlife culling, because
he was considered one ot the best marksmen in the area.
According to an examination conducted after the
shooting he had an IQ of 78 and was suffering from borderline
personality disorder.
Family
Delport had a brother named Willem. He had constant
disputes with his stepmother Eleonora, who couldn't stand him and
wanted him off the farm,[ as well as his father Marthiens, whom he
called a hard and ruthless man and accused of casting him from his
rightful place, when he adopted a black boy two months prior to the
shooting.
According to Delport his father often said that he
was stupid and belonged in a mental institution. He also was not
allowed to eat together with his father and stepmother at the table,
but had to have his meals outside the house.
Marthiens Delport had an illegitimate daughter with
a black woman and once raped a 16-year-old relative, who afterwards
unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide.
Shooting
The shooting began at the farm after Delport had an
argument with his father about the sale of three calves. When his
father showed him the money he had just received, commenting that he
would give it to his stepmother, Delport armed himself with a .357
Magnum revolver and killed the man with a shot to the chest on the
veranda. He then attempted to help his father, but he was already
dead. Delport next shot the housemaid Makhozana Alzina Ntombela in the
kitchen and set fire to the mattress in his room and his car, which
eventually caused the house to burn down.
Outside, about 750 metres from the farm, he killed
Msamaniso Mdladla and Petros Ndlala, the two black men who had come to
buy the calves, and then drove to his stepmother in Ladysmith to set
her car on fire, but when he failed to find it, he began shooting
randomly at people in the street with a Ruger Mini-14.
Delport continued shooting at the parking lot of a
shopping centre, killing a total of five people, including traffic
officer Prithlal Rambally, who was hit three times, and wounding 11
more. When police arrived at the scene he sped away in his truck
towards Newcastle and shot at commuters in a bus, wounding six of
them. Delport was eventually arrested on a road outside of Ladysmith,
after a short chase and a shooutout with police, in which two officers
were wounded.
Besides the rifle police recovered four 30-round
magazines, the .357 Magnum revolver and more than 3,600 rounds of
ammuntion from Delport's truck. Most of his victims were killed with
shots to the heart.
Victims
Those killed were:
Marthiens Delport, 68, Delport's father
Makhozana Alzina Ntombela, 40, housemaid at
the Delport farm
Msamaniso Mdladla, killed at the farm
Petros Ndlala, killed at the farm
Melusi Obed Zwane
Mohamed Faruk Laka
Enock Lucky Nyatahi
Patrick Mbongeni Gumede
Prithlal Rambally, 28, traffic officer
Aftermath
Because most of Delport's victims were black,
racial tensions increased in the area, and during his trial a crowd
gathered outside the court and threatened to lynch him.
On March 4 the trial was postponed to March 18 for
a two week long psychiatric examination of the gunman. Dr. Anthony
Dunn, chief psychiatrist at the Midlands Hospital, argued that Delport
was not mentally ill during the shooting, but due to his low IQ, his
inability to cope with stress, and his hatred against his father he
was of partially unsound mind and lost all self-control. Prosecution
accepted his mental incapacity, low intelligence and emotional
imbalance to be mitigating factors and refrained from demanding
capital punishment, instead asking for a long-term prison sentence
during which Delport should receive psychological help.
Delport pleaded not guilty, claiming that he was of
unsound mind during the shooting and fired at black shapes that were
attacking him. On October 21 he was found guilty after changing his
plea, and on October 29 he was sentenced to a total of 39 years in
prison, among them 22 years for nine counts of murder, and 12 years
for 21 counts of attempted murder. The sentences run concurrently,
meaning that he will be released after 22 years. Delport was also
declared unfit to ever be able to obtain a firearms license.
Wikipedia.org
Mass Killing Caused by
Dispute Over Price of Cattle
By Barry Renfrew - The Associated Press
January 21, 1992
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) _ A family quarrel
over the price of cattle triggered a rampage by a gunman that left
nine people dead and 19 wounded in a rural town, police said today.
Police Capt. Mike Apelgryn said Kallie Delport
argued Monday with his father, Marthiens Delport, over the price the
older man accepted for some cattle that morning. The son said the
price was too low, police said.
Police allege the son got an assault rifle and shot
and killed his father and three other people on the family farm,
including a young herd boy. They say he also set fire to the
farmhouse.
Delport, a 30-year-old white man, then went to the
nearby town of Ladysmith and randomly shot people at a shopping mall
in one of the bloodiest mass killings in South African history, police
said.
''It was chaos. I think he went bonkers. He just
shot at anyone he saw,'' said Bonny York, a local shopowner.
Delport was described as having a history of mental
illness by the South African Press Association.
The gunman then returned to his yellow pickup truck
and sped away with police in pursuit, witnesses said. ''He kept on
shooting wildly at anyone he saw while he was driving,'' York said.
After a brief chase, the man stopped his truck and
waged a gun battle with police before he was apprehended, the
witnesses added. A traffic officer was among those killed.
Police said they found 2,000 rounds of unused
ammunition in the man's truck.
In this heavily armed and violent country, there
are often cases in which a white man turns a gun on his family.
South Africa also has experienced racially
motivated shootings in recent years, and officials worry that such
attacks could spark retaliatory violence. There were white, black and
Indian victims in Monday's shooting spree.
However, no one disputed the police assessment of
the attack.
Police Minister Hernus Kriel urged ''all sectors of
the Ladysmith community to remain calm and not to overreact or take
steps which could result in any form of conflict whatsoever.''
Ladysmith, 190 miles southeast of Johannesburg, is
in Natal Province, the scene of bitter fighting between rival black
factions in recent years.
