A Wellington family is demanding justice for their beloved father they say was brutally killed by cops during a drug raid last week.
Hartseer relatives of Jan De Bruin, 48, say they watched in disbelief as cops allegedly beat him to a pulp and rukked his dreadlocks from his head.
Daughter Meagan Pietersen, 21, says a large group of officers stormed their home in Colibri Street shortly after 3pm and started beating up everyone.
“My father is a Rasta and they said they were looking for dagga. He stopped them at the door and asked to see a search warrant and that is when they started beating him,” she says.
“I was inside the house and they came skiet, skiet here in. They didn’t care if there were children in the house.
“They started hitting everyone and sprayed teargas. They rukked my father’s dreads out of his head and loaded the men in the van.”
Beaten to death: Jan De Bruin, 48, of Wellington
Nephew Francois De Bruin, 24, says he was loaded in the van with his uncle, who kept falling flou on the way to the police
station.
“They opened the door and sprayed pepper spray and then closed the door again and drove all over with us,” says Francois.
“When we got to the station, they grabbed him by his hair and started hitting him again and the blood was everywhere then I saw him passed out.
“There was nothing I could do to save him. They kept us in jail the whole weekend and on Monday we appeared in court after they told us we were being charged with attempted murder, we don’t know of who.
“We sat the whole day at court but were never called up because there was no docket and we were sent home and told Oom Jan is dead.”
Meagan says an investigator from the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) came to tell the family they were looking into her father’s death.
“We just want justice,” she says.
Ipid spokesperson, Sontaga Seisa, confirms: “We are investigating the death as a result of police action in Wellington. Nobody is arrested at this stage.”
monique.duval@inl.co.za