While many South Africans celebrated Mother’s Day by surprising their moms with gifts, Maurice Pirzenthal of Port Elizabeth had a gruesome surprise in store for his mother.

He marked off the days on his calendar leading up to Sunday to stab his 77-year-old mother to death. And he used a speargun to do it.

Jislaaik.

Times LIVE has the details about what went down:

The 50-year-old Port Elizabeth man sat waiting on a chair in their garden with a speargun for Barbara Sturdy‚ 77‚ to return from a night church service and then stabbed her to death…

He also stabbed his sister‚ Sandra Coetzee‚ 57‚ in the throat. While Coetzee managed to escape‚ Pirzenthal climbed into his vehicle and gassed himself in his locked garage.

What a bloody tragic thing to happen. It’s even sadder when you consider that Sturdy would have been celebrating her 78th birthday the next day.

Coetzee, who’s recovering in a state hospital, must be asking herself the same thing we’re all wondering: what prompted her brother to murder their mother?

Apparently, he and Sturdy were engaged in a six-year feud over occupancy of his property, which Pirzenthal [below] bought from his mother in 2012, and where he had operated what tenants described as a commune.

However‚ Sturdy also held a usufruct on the house: in other words, she had the legal right to use and benefit from the property.

Not good for her son. Back in March‚ a Port Elizabeth court ruled that he and his tenants must vacate the property by the end of this month.

Clearly, Pirzenthal wasn’t pleased about that.

A female tenant said that she saw him sitting on a chair near the gate, lying in wait for Sturdy:

He had been marking off the days until the 14th [yesterday] on his calendar in the house … he had some sort of gas gun on him and then we later saw that he was sitting next to one of those spearguns.

Nothing suspicious about that, I’m sure.

A second tenant said the property was heavily monitored by CCTV cameras set up by Pirzenthal to monitor his mother both on the property and outside. He had also strategically placed three large rock formations in the driveway to make it difficult for Sturdy to access her garage.

So, nothing suspicious that might have set off the alarms in their tenants’ minds and potentially save Sturdy from her death?

Bloody tragic.

[source:timeslive]