Marli van Breda Returns to School


By Oliver Ngwenya    10-Jun-2015 12:54 UTC+02:00
Marli van Breda, the teenager who survived the attack in which her parents and one of her brothers were killed. She has returned to school. Image: ibTimes

Marli van Breda, the teenager who survived the attack in which her parents and one of her brothers were killed. She has returned to school.
Image: ibTimes.

Marli van Breda, one of the two survivors of the Stellenbosch axe murders, has started going back to her former school on a full time basis and is said to be coping well with all her work to the extent that she is learning at the same level with her peers despite her long period of absence due to an attempt on her life as well as the time that she spent in hospital.

Marli and her brother, Henri are the two survivors from the family of five, which included their two parents, Martin and Teresa and their eldest brother. The latter three all died on the day of the attack when a purported intruder attacked everyone in their home with an axe. Marli had her throat slit and was left for dead and was only saved by the immaculate work of the hospital in which she spent a sizeable amount of time. Henri, on the other hand, was not injured at all in the attack and managed to call the police in an affair which has left many in the quiet town and the country at large dumbfounded. After her release from the hospital, Marli was said to be suffering from retrograde amnesia and this has reduced her usefulness in identifying the perpetrator of the heinous crime. When she was released, she briefly visited her school to see her friends and as part of her therapy.

According to the latest information, she has been okayed to go back to school on a fulltime basis after the amount of progress she has made. She started attending school on a full time basis after it became apparent that she was coping with her subjects and was physically able to deal with a full school day,” the teenager’s legal representative, Advocate Louise Buikman confirmed on Tuesday. Advocate Buikman further confirmed that, as a result of the return to a full school day, Marli had cut back on the amount of therapy that she was doing. Buikman, however informed members of the media that Marli would not be sitting for the upcoming examinations because of the amount of learning time that she had lost.


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