Cape Town – Sister Diane Seale of New Somerset Hospital in Cape Town reportedly hugged and comforted a man who shot dead a police officer and two patients at the hospital over the weekend.
This was all in an effort to calm him down.
According to News24, Seale was performing a routine handover when she received a distress call from a colleague. On her way to respond to the call, she encountered something unexpected on the hospital’s second floor.
“As I entered the second floor, I noticed a body on the floor in the corridor, but my eye caught the patient with the gun in his hand. I proceeded to walk straight to him [and] made eye contact. I walked towards him and I hugged him. I escorted him into the cubicle. He told me to close the door. I dealt with him as a person. I wasn’t focused on what he had done or might still do. I asked him: ‘What happened?’ I reached out and touched him, and he allowed me to,” the report quoted Seale as saying.
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She continued: “This gave me confidence and I knew that he trusted me. He looked at me while my hands were still on his shoulders and said: ‘You are brave, you are the only one that has come in here.’ I lifted his face and said, ‘Do you see this uniform? I am here to save life and limb.’ Eventually he agreed for me to sedate him. Through it all, I sat with him, stroking his forehead until he was finally sedated”.
According to IOL, Seal said that she kept all her focus solely on the shooter, who was later revealed to allegedly be a former police officer.
“I did not want to take my eyes off him. I kept on telling him that we needed to talk. I dealt with him as a person.
“I wasn’t focused on what he had done or might still do,” the report quoted her as saying.
Jean-Paul Malgas, 39, disarmed a Sea Point police officer, Constable Donay Phillips, who was transporting a suspect to the hospital for medical treatment on Saturday night.
He shot him as well as two other patients.
Constable Phillips was seriously injured while the patients died on the scene. Phillips was taken to the hospital but later died as a result of his injuries, according to a police statement.
Malgas was arrested on the scene.
The motive behind the shooting still remained unknown.
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Compiled by Sinothando Siyolo
