A SENSELESS ACT

A Plettenberg Bay widow tells YOU how her husband’s life was tragically cut short by an act of road rage

- MAXINE PETERS

SHE was waiting for him to join her and the kids for dinner when she got the call that turned her life upside down: her husband had been involved in a serious incident while on the road.

Ashleigh Smit, who lives in Plettenberg Bay but was visiting friends in Knysna that day, rushed to the local hospital where her husband, Alan, had been taken. Doctors told her to prepare for the worst: her husband’s life was hanging by a thread. He’d sustained severe injuries to his skull and had been put on life support, but there was no brain activity.

“His family all rushed down from Johannesburg the next morning and we made the decision to turn off the life support machine at 5pm that afternoon,” Ashleigh (28) tells YOU.

Alan and a friend had made a quick trip to Sedgefield on the Garden Route to see another friend that day in March 2019, and the men were on their way back home to their families.

Alan (28) was behind the wheel of his Land Rover Defender on the N2 between Sedgefield and Knysna in the Western Cape when a silver Opel Corsa bakkie appeared behind him, driving close to his vehicle and flashing its headlights.

The bakkie tried to pass several times but Alan couldn’t pull over onto the shoulder of the road due to poor visibility. The driver eventually managed to pass Alan and pulled into the lane in front of his car, forcing him to stop.

The driver opened the door of his bakkie and Alan got out of his vehicle. But as he walked back to his car after a verbal altercation, the man reversed into Alan, knocking him over and crushing his skull.