Hluleka attack victim has major surgery

Hluleka Nature Reserve attack victim Matthew Turner was moved out of ICU at a Pietermaritzburg hospital on Friday after having lost part of his large intestine in emergency surgery.

As funeral arrangements were being made for his slain wife Karen, who is to be buried in the couple’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal next Friday, Turner’s brother-in-law, Ian Crouch, visited him in hospital on Friday.

“He has been moved out of ICU and into the surgical ward. He is heavily bandaged.

“He was stabbed so badly in the stomach that his intestines came out, and he actually had to lose part of his large intestine.”

Crouch said Turner was “compos mentis” and was talking, although he was very tired and “obviously still very emotional”.

Karen, 31, was stabbed to death during the attack in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Police spokesperson Capt Dineo Koena said on Friday that no arrests had been made, nor had any murder weapon been found.

On Wednesday, police dogs and handlers from the Mthatha K9 unit arrived at the scene, and were overheard by the Dispatch saying they were looking for the murder weapon.

Koena would not say how many suspects they were looking for.

A Hluleka worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Dispatch that employees normally arrived at work at 6am and left at 11pm, when the gates were locked.

After 11pm, there were no security guards on duty, she said.

“But when we arrived the next morning [Wednesday], we saw that the gate had been broken open.”

Koena confirmed the police had broken the gate open to gain access to the property.

Meanwhile, at the Lilizela Tourism Awards at Dan’s Country Lodge outside Mthatha on Thursday, Eastern Cape education MEC Fundile Gade said it was crucial that tourists were made to feel safer “while the country is embarking on [attracting] foreign direct investments” to create jobs.