A farmer fires one shot at an armed intruder approaching him in a dark farmhouse. The intruder dies. Hours later, the farmer fires three shots towards a surviving accomplice, whose hands are tied. The accomplice survives.
The court acquits the farmer of murder of the deceased intruder but convicts him of attempted murder for the later shooting.
The case of Stephanus Samson, decided in the Gqeberha High Court on 20 June 2025, gives firearm owners a concrete example of how proportionality is assessed. A fatal defensive shot can be lawful. A shooting that causes no fatal injury can still be criminal. The court must examine the threat and the justification for using force at the moment it is used.
The confrontation in the farmhouse
On the evening of 2 September 2023, Renaldo Blaauw, Shalton Bruintjies and three others planned to break into a secluded farmhouse in Louterwater, near Joubertina. They believed it was unoccupied and intended to steal items they could sell to buy alcohol.
Samson and an associate, Mouers, were inside. After repeated thefts and break-ins, and what Samson described as a lack of assistance from the police, they were keeping watch with the intention of apprehending intruders and taking them to the police. Samson had a licensed firearm.
Blaauw and Bruintjies entered through the rear of the house, armed with knives and a panga. There was no electricity, and the confrontation unfolded in the limited light from a mobile phone.
Samson confronted Blaauw, who was carrying a knife. He ordered him to stop, followed him into the kitchen and had him disarmed and restrained. Samson did not fire any shots at him.
Bruintjies then approached the kitchen doorway, close to Samson’s right side. Samson’s account was that Bruintjies was coming towards him with a raised panga. Samson leaned back towards a table and fired one shot which fatally wounded Bruintjies. When he fired the shot, Bruintjies was approximately two metres away from him.
Was a firearm proportionate to a panga?
A comparison of the weapons alone would miss much of what happened inside that kitchen.
In paragraph 23 of the judgment, Judge Avinash Govindjee set out the requirements for private defence. The attack must have begun or be imminently threatening. The defensive act must be necessary to protect the threatened interest, directed against the attacker and reasonably proportionate to the attack.
For a firearm owner, this means asking what harm the attacker was about to inflict and whether the defensive force was reasonably necessary to prevent it. A panga blade at close range can threaten life or cause serious injury. The fact that the defender has a firearm does not, by itself, make its use excessive.
In Samson’s case, the court considered his position near the doorway, the intruder’s approach from a blind spot, the weapons, the poor light and the speed of the confrontation. The judge found that Bruintjies was armed with a knife and panga and was about to enter the kitchen very near Samson.
The court also considered Bruintjies’s slim build. In that moment, the judge found, it counted for little. His build did not remove the danger presented by the armed approach and the dangerous weapons that he carried
Samson’s earlier restraint mattered too. He had encountered Blaauw carrying a long-bladed knife and secured him without firing, even after Blaauw initially disobeyed his instruction. The court regarded that response as measured and consistent with an intention to apprehend him and report the matter to the police.
Taken together, these circumstances supported the finding that Samson had acted reasonably in self-defence when he fired the fatal shot.
What the evidence could establish
The court did not accept every detail of Samson’s account. It rejected his claim that Mouers had shouted a warning immediately before the shooting, finding that this part of his testimony had been tailored to fit his version.
It also rejected important parts of Blaauw’s account of the fatal shot. Blaauw had been lying on the floor, restrained, in a dimly lit and unfamiliar room. His opportunity to see the precise movements was limited, and his account conflicted with the medical evidence about the bullet’s trajectory.
The medical evidence allowed for Bruintjies to have turned away in reaction to the firearm as Samson fired. That movement did not establish that the threat had already ended before Samson decided to shoot.
The judge concluded that there was a reasonable possibility that the substance of Samson’s self-defence account was true. The State had not proved his guilt on the murder charge beyond reasonable doubt.
This is a useful reminder of how carefully a shooting must be reconstructed. The positions of those involved, the available light and the physical evidence can be decisive when witnesses give conflicting accounts.
One shot is not a rule for proportionality
The judgment referred to Samson firing a single shot, but it does not create a rule that one shot is always lawful or that a particular number of shots is always excessive.
Applying the court’s test, even one shot would require a defensive justification. Equally, the assessment of any further shot would have to consider whether the threat remained and whether that force was still reasonably necessary to repel it.
Proportionality also cannot be decided from the injury alone. Bruintjies died, yet the court accepted that Samson’s defensive act was lawful in the circumstances. The death was the consequence of the shot; it did not, on its own, prove that the force had been disproportionate.
When the justification disappeared
The later events presented a very different situation.
Samson and Mouers transported Blaauw away from the farmhouse and disposed of Bruintjies’s body. At a remote location, Samson fired three shots towards Blaauw from about ten metres away. Blaauw’s hands were still tied behind his back. He pretended to be dead while Samson and Mouers dragged him towards a hole and covered him with branches. He later escaped and reported what had happened to the SAPS
Samson denied firing those shots and blamed Mouers. The court rejected that account and accepted Blaauw’s evidence about the later events.
At this stage, Blaauw was a restrained captive. The circumstances that had justified the defensive shot in the kitchen provided no justification for shooting at him in the bush. The court convicted Samson of attempted murder, kidnapping and two counts of defeating the ends of justice.
The court also refused to let the later crimes determine the lawfulness of the earlier defensive shot. It assessed the two episodes separately. Samson’s unlawful conduct afterwards did not retrospectively make the shooting in the kitchen murder.
The lesson for firearm owners
The Samson judgment shows why proportionality requires attention to the actual encounter. Weapons matter, but so do distance, movement, visibility and the immediacy of the danger. A defender making a decision in seconds must be assessed with proper consideration of those circumstances.
The same assessment must continue as the situation changes. Once there is no ongoing or imminent attack to repel, the earlier danger cannot justify further shooting. Anger at the break-in, previous losses or frustration with the police cannot supply that missing justification.
For firearm owners, the question is therefore practical and immediate: what threat am I stopping, and is this force reasonably necessary to stop it now?
In the kitchen, the court accepted Samson’s answer. At the remote roadside, the evidence established a crime.
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