Lyne Forbes had returned from a dinner party with her sister, Trudy, and brother-in-law, Trevor, at around 10 that night when her youngest son, Steffan (30), called Trevor.

Lynn knew it was terrible news when Trevor sat next to her and put his arms around her.

“I thought it was my mom. At first, he couldn’t speak, then he said, ‘No, it’s Kiernan’,” she recalls.

 

 

 

 

 

The news knocked the wind out of her. She felt her legs give out and no one could console her as she sobbed hysterically on the floor.

“I didn’t want anybody to touch me until Steffan came after an hour and hugged me and said he would take care of everything,” Lynn says.

Her ex-husband, Tony Forbes, was sound asleep at his home in Cape Town when he heard a vigorous knock on the door.

He had nodded off on the couch with his daughter, Sarah (8), and had missed several calls from family members.

“Lynn’s niece came to my gate around midnight with a phone in her hand and said her dad wanted to tell me something,” he recalls.

“He told me the news and I remember collapsing.”

Tony (56) barely had time to digest the news before the daunting task of identifying his son fell to him.

“I remember Steffan calling me and saying we must go identify the body. I was anxious because I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t know where he’d been shot,” he says.

He scarcely slept as he made plans to travel to Durban and boarded a flight at 5 the next morning. Seeing his son lying lifeless in the morgue is an image that’s seared into his mind.

“I keep replaying that Saturday morning in my head. There are days where I can’t see beyond the pain and nothing else matters,” he says.

Lynn (54) understands his heartache all too well. “I never thought I’d experience this. It feels like some part of me has been cut away,” she says.