IT WAS LIKE A MOVIE

What was supposed to be a relaxed evening braai turned into a nightmare and led to a six-year prison sentence for attempted murder

- ROBYN LUCAS

EVERYTHING happened so fast. One moment they were enjoying a braai with their staff, the next minute there was chaos.

The events of that night will be lodged in Ursula Lawrence’s memory forever.

“It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” the 55-year-old from Thornton, Cape Town, tells us. “It was like something from a movie.”

And it was just such a shock too. One minute they were braaiing chicken and tucking into salads, the next all hell had broken loose. One man’s eye popped out of his socket and others were left with fractured limbs, broken teeth and leg injuries.

It all happened, Ursula tells us, when a man at the braai had an argument with his wife. He insisted she leave the braai with him, but she refused. In a rage he drove his car full speed towards the gate of the property, sending the heavy metal barrier toppling onto the people chatting and eating on the driveway.

The man responsible was Nathanael Felix, and he was convicted of four counts of attempted murder for what went down at Ursula’s home on 1 December 2018. Nathanael was sentenced to six years in prison in 2020 but he recently sought to appeal his conviction in the high court in Cape Town. Judge Robert Henney, however, was having none of it.

“He deliberately drove through the gate because his wife didn’t want to accompany him home,” he said. “He was upset with Khumalo for telling him his wife was not his property and that she didn’t want to go with him. And for that reason, he acted the way he did.”