Colleagues of a Durban waitress watched in horror as her boyfriend shot her in the head at a restaurant.
|||Colleagues of a Durban waitress watched in horror on Sunday as her disabled boyfriend – on crutches – opened fire, killing her instantly before attempting to take his own life.
Bhomubhomu Princess Ngcobo, 25, was shot in the forehead, outside Steers in Morningside’s Florida Road, where she had worked for the past seven months.
Her ex-boyfriend, who worked at the Durban Central Police Station, tried to shoot himself, only to find he had run out of bullets.
“He just stood there (near Ngcobo’s body) until police came to arrest him,” said restaurant owner Paul Curry.
Curry said Ngcobo was killed while she was about to join her six colleagues on a minibus taxi taking them home in the early hours of Sunday morning.
She was originally from Lindelani, north of Durban, but early last year moved in with her boyfriend. After they broke up, Ngcobo moved out.
Curry said her former boy-friend had been demanding that they renew the relationship.
“Since last week he had been coming to talk to her at least three times a day every day… He had also been constantly phoning her on the restaurant’s landline,” he said.
A CCTV video footage shows the man talking to Ngcobo shortly before the restaurant closed at about 3am.
The suspect spent an hour in the restaurant talking to Ngcobo.
After customers had left, Ngcobo left the suspect to clean a table and prepared to go home.
The suspect was shown walking on crutches out of the restaurant.
Five bullet holes in the windows and ceiling were evidence of the shooting. “He fired six shots at close range, but only one hit the deceased. One of the bullets went through a vehicle that had been parked in front of the restaurant and its driver immediately drove away,” said Curry.
Ngcobo’s sister, Ayanda, said the family had warned her sister to end the relationship because of suspect’s “dangerous” behaviour.
“She left her family and her two-year-old son to live with this man in January last year… Sometime last year my mother visited her to talk to her, but this man was very impolite to my mother.
Police spokesman Captain Thulani Zwane said a man had been arrested but he could not say when he would appear in court. - The Mercury