A top criminal lawyer was shot in the head as he dropped his two children off at the school gates in Cape Town.
Advocate Pete Mihalik died instantly when the assassin fired two bullets from point blank range at his head.
Mr Mihalik’s eight-year-old son who was also in the car was injured in the shooting in the city’s Sea Point district and rushed to hospital. His daughter was unhurt though severely traumatised.
An eye witness said: “The gunman put his gun back in a brief case and got into a VW golf and was driven off. It was over in seconds. Two bangs I think and then he was gone.
“Then I heard a girl screaming for an ambulance and it all went a bit crazy” she said.
Cape Town’s elite Anti-Gang squad of detectives were called in to take over the investigation with the death being immediately linked to the murky Cape Town underworld.
A South African Police Service spokesman said: “We can confirm that a 50-year-old man has died after being fatally shot by an unidentified suspect who is not yet arrested.
“An 8 year old boy was also injured and has been taken to hospital for treatment. A girl who was in the car was uninjured in the attack which took place at 7.35am” he said.
The cold blooded murder of one of the Western Cape’s most talented criminal lawyers in cold blood has shocked the legal world and stunned police.
Mr Mihalik, 50, who was said to have been receiving round-the-clock protection, has represented a number of extremely prominent underworld figures in the Cape Town gang wars which have resulted in many hits over the last two years.
Mr Mihalik’s lawyer partner Noorudien Hassan, 45, was also executed in cold blood by a gunman who shot him twice outside his home in Cape Town two years ago.
