Former South African security guard Louis van Schoor, one of the apartheid regime’s most bloodthirsty killers, has died aged 72 from a blood infection.
Van Schoor’s death, which occurred last Thursday, was confirmed by his daughter to the British broadcaster BBC, a week after the newspaper published a new investigation into the carnage carried out by the so-called “aparheid killer” in the late 1980s, during the last period of the regime.
South African authorities are still investigating Van Schoor for shooting dead 39 people between 1986 and 1989 while working as a private security guard in the South African city of East London, on the country’s coast. One of his victims was a 12-year-old boy.
Van Schoor was arrested in 1991 and convicted of seven murders, but 32 others were deemed by the former regime’s police to be “justifiable killings” under the segregationist law that gave South African security forces the ability to use lethal force at their discretion against the country’s black population.
During the BBC investigation, Van Schoor claimed that he only shot criminals caught “red-handed”, but said that “every night was a new adventure” and that the pursuit of black people was “exciting” and akin to “a hunt”.
