Single Bullet Kills Deaf Man

DURBAN - Deaf couple Navin and Jessica Ragbeer, both aged 37, had known each other since their school days and no one was surprised when they married 12 years ago. They were inseparable, said Premmie Tholsi, Jessica’s mother.



But in the early hours of Thursday their loving marriage came to a tragic end at their Phoenix home when Navin was shot and killed by an intruder.



With blood oozing from his wound and paramedics still to arrive, Jessica prayed fervently for Navin as he lay helpless and dying on their veranda floor, but help came too late. “Why, why him?” asked Jessica.



Tholsi related her grief-stricken daughter’s anguish when the Sunday Tribune called at the family’s home. Jessica is a teacher at the St Martin’s School for the Deaf, physically and mentally challenged in Port Shepstone.



Navin was an administrative worker at the VN Naik School for the Deaf in Newlands. Three intruders surprised the Ragbeers, who live with Tholsi in her modest home, just as Navin was about to drive Jessica to Durban station to catch a bus to work. All the intruders took were a flat-screen TV and Jessica’s handbag with her cellphone and a small amount of cash.



Police spokesman Captain Thulani Zwane confirmed that Navin was pronounced dead at the home in Phoenix after sustaining a single gunshot wound to the chest. Read more: http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/single-bullet-kills-deaf-man-1.1437894#.UMUWx3qS-So SOURCE