Heroic act that ended in death
Taryn Warricker talks about the walk in the park that ended with her cradling her dead husband's head in her lap.
|||Durban - A walk in a park that Pinetown’s Taryn Warricker had been visiting since she was a child, ended with the 34-year-old cradling her husband’s head in her lap as he heaved his last breath.
Now, eight days after her terrifying ordeal, Warricker has spoken for the first time about the moment that changed her life.
She said she had pleaded with the man she described as her first love, not to leave her, but in a matter of moments, Hennie Warricker - less than a month shy of his 40th birthday - had died.
He had been shot during a heroic bid to protect his wife from armed men who held the couple up and made off with their car.
“We had been together all of our lives, I just feel so alone now,” Taryn told the Daily News on Wednesday.
Tears rolled down the heartbroken widow’s cheeks as she said she longed for five more minutes with her husband.
“Just to tell him how much I love him,” she said.
Recalling last Wednesday’s harrowing ordeal, she said she and Hennie had decided to take their dogs, Abby and Mia, to the park just before 6pm.
It was late, but the dogs had been eager to get out.
The couple had lived in Pinetown all their lives and Taryn had grown up close to the Seaforth Road park where they were attacked. They regularly took Abby and Mia there to play.
Having noticed two men near the park, the couple were returning to their car when the men approached them, demanding their keys.
As one of them, whom Taryn said had a gun, closed in on her husband, he tried to distance himself from her, in an attempt to protect her, and she made a dash for the car.
He handed over the keys and, contrary to previous reports, Taryn said, did not make any attempt to confront the man.
She was almost at the car when she heard a gunshot and her husband’s voice, yelling “Hey!”. She turned to see what had happened and a second shot was fired.
As the gunman and his accomplice made a beeline for the couple’s car, Taryn raced to her husband’s side. The men fled and she was left, scared and broken, in the park with her dying husband.
She struggled through tears as she recalled how the blood had poured from his mouth as he laid in her arms.
The widow said she would hold on to the many precious memories she and her husband had made during the 20 years they had been a couple.
The owner of a gardening company, some of Taryn’s fondest memories were of the times they had spent together in their own yard. She would remember Hennie, a fitter and turner, for having “the best heart in the world”, she said.
“He would help anyone and he loved Abby and Mia to bits.”
Taryn and her family were expecting the coming festive season - and what would have been Hennie’s birthday - to be a difficult time, emotionally.
He would be cremated, she said.
Police had made no arrest by Wednesday.
Daily News
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