I'M RACKED BY THE GUILT

Megen Kloppers tells YOU about the murder charge she's facing after she killed her husband in a 'freak accident'

- JACQUES MYBURGH

WHEN she goes into town she can feel the judgment directed at her. She would never have intentionally hurt the love of her life, she insists and she didn't want his life to end.

"People think I'm a murderer," says Megen Kloppers at her home in Brits in North West. "When I go shopping in town I can feel people staring at me. I just wish they could realise it was a freak accident."

The freak accident Megen (25) is referring to is on constant replay in her mind. She won't easily forget the moment she heard her husband's last words to her: "Oh no, my love, you shot me."

She'd meant to shoot a porcupine when they were out on their game farm, Megen claims, and says she didn't realise her husband, Freek Kloppers (31), had walked around the side of the bakkie into the line of fire. She felt the kick of the .22 rifle on her shoulder, heard the bang of the gun firing, then his last words.

At first she thought he was joking, she says as sobs start to rack her body. "But then he collapsed. I got cold and threw the gun down."

Megen insists Freek's death on 6 June was an accident - but she's now facing murder charges. She was initially charged with culpable homicide and possession of an unlicensed weapon, but it was later changed to murder.

Megen was arrested and spent eight nights in the detention cells of Northam Police Station in Limpopo, but has since been released on R5 000 bail to care for her and Freek's three-year-old son, Ronaldo.

She's devastated that Ronaldo will grow up without his dad, Megen says, and she feels enormous guilt about what happened. "He was my everything. I lost the love of my life in the blink of an eye.

MEGEN first met Freek when she was in Grade 11, but nothing came of it even though she found him attractive. In 2019 she battled to deal with a relationship ending and prayed for love to come her way again.