A Cape Town woman, 54, will appear in court for allegedly beating her boyfriend to death with a set of his crutches.
|||Cape Town - A Cape Town woman, 54, will appear in the Muizenberg Magistrate’s Court on Friday for allegedly beating her boyfriend to death with a set of his crutches.
On Sunday, Lionel de Robillard, 50, of Marina da Gama in Muizenberg, was spotted by his neighbours crawling naked down a pavement on Shearwater Drive in the canal suburb, trying to escape an attacker.
De Robillard, a car salesman at Turner & Turner Motors in Diep River, was allegedly beaten with his own crutches by his girlfriend of seven years.
She cannot be named.
De Robillard’s distraught brother, Patrick, told the Cape Argus his brother had had a hip replacement about a year ago. He had used the crutches during his recovery.
But De Robillard, who had flown down from Joburg, said his brother had also had a stroke just a week earlier.
Neighbours protected De Robillard from further attack, and called an ambulance.
He died on Tuesday at 7.30am. Police said he had severe head injuries.
“I spoke to him last Thursday and told him we had to get him out of his abusive relationship,” De Robillard said, adding his brother had been attacked with a hammer about a year ago.
“He had been thinking about possibly moving back to Mauritius, where we are from.”
He “loved plants, had green fingers, loved animals and loved the auto trade”.
Roddy Turner, the car salesman’s employer, described his friend’s death as “a tragic loss”.
A colleague, David Norton, said he visited De Robillard in hospital before he died.
“He explained to me what had happened.”
At the time nurses had told him they were most worried about swollen internal organs. He had died the following morning.
De Robillard alleged the suspect had attacked a woman at William Simpson Cars in nearby Lakeside several years before. The woman, Jacqui Duyn, confirmed this, and said it had taken five policemen to remove the women from their showroom.
“The next day I had two black eyes,” she said.
De Robillard was divorced, with a son and daughter who live in Durban, and another daughter in Cape Town.
Cape Argus