My son saw me in hero nurse, says mother of hospital shooting accused

The last time Jaun-Paul Carl Malgas saw his mother, a retired nurse, he hugged her.

Three days later, after allegedly shooting dead three people at a Cape Town hospital, the 39-year-old hugged another nurse.

This time it was Sister Diane Seale, who explained later that even though two patients were already dead and police constable Donay Phillips had been shot, “there were still patients alive that I needed to save”.

As Seale sat in a New Somerset Hospital cubicle talking to Malgas in an attempt to calm him, she said, “He looked at me while my hands were still on his shoulders and said, 'You are brave, you are the only one that has come in here'.

“During our exchanges I lifted his face and said, 'do you see this uniform? I am here to save life and limb'.”

Speaking to the Sunday Times at her home in Vredenburg this week, Regina Malgas, 62, said she believed her son had “seen her in Seale”.

“He listens to me,” she said. “When he left on Thursday, he spoke as if I would not see him again. He hugged and kissed me. To me, it felt like it was the last goodbye.”

Malgas was handcuffed and shackled when he appeared in the Cape Town magistrate's court on Tuesday on charges of murder, robbery, possession of an unlicensed firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.

As he awaits his next appearance on June 30, a Western Cape police brigadier has begun an investigation into how a man accused of the attempted murder of a police officer two days before the hospital shootings was left unguarded.

Western Cape police spokesperson Brig Novela Potelwa said Malgas was involved in an altercation with Hopefield police on Thursday evening and allegedly stabbed an officer.

Regina Malgas said police shot her son to subdue him.

Potelwa said: “It was during the incident with Hopefield police that he was injured. He was taken to a local medical facility and later transferred to the New Somerset Hospital. The police in Hopefield opened an attempted-murder case.”

Regina Malgas said she was surprised when her son called her on Saturday morning and told her that after spending two nights at the hospital, he had been discharged.

“He got into a scuffle with the police in Hopefield. He was looking for his son and he went to confront the police. He couldn’t find his son on the local sports field and asked the police for help but he felt that they were taking long and an argument ensued,” she said.

“He was shot by the police, that’s why he was in the hospital. He called me on Saturday morning and told me he was being discharged. It was just after 9am. I asked: ‘Where is the police officer?’ He said: ‘No mommy, he left'.”

Regina said she did not have enough money to travel the 150km to Cape Town to fetch her son and told him to ask nursing staff for help or wait for the police to fetch him.

Her unwavering focus and attention on the suspected shooter ensured that countless lives were spared

—  Western Cape premier Alan Winde, paying tribute to Sister Diane Seale

“I was a nurse, I know how things work. I told him to speak to the nurse in charge. I said the police must come and fetch you. And then he cut off the call.”

Malgas was still waiting at the hospital last Saturday evening when Phillips arrived, escorting a suspect who required medical attention.

Malgas allegedly grabbed Phillips’s firearm and shot him and two patients. The two male patients died immediately and Phillips, 32, who was based at Sea Point police station, died on Sunday morning.

Police sources told the Sunday Times a Vredenburg police officer had accompanied Malgas to Cape Town in an ambulance but city police stations refused to provide a guard once he was admitted to New Somerset.

New Somerset acting CEO Dr Jacques Hendricks told CapeTalk on Friday: “He was actually brought to us under police guard and somewhere the police sort of left and that's what they will investigate of course.”

Potelwa said questions “that relate to guard duties by police and Jaun-Paul Malgas’s subsequent discharge from hospital are the subject of an internal SAPS investigation instituted on Sunday”.

“The investigation is led by a brigadier from the provincial office and is yet to be finalised.”

Potelwa said Malgas, who also faces a charge of assault in Vredenburg, was dismissed from the SAPS in 2007 “with several others for corruption and drug-related crimes”.

Regina said her son had been struggling with drug addiction ever since. In February, she said, he was discharged from a Stellenbosch rehabilitation centre and had since defaulted on medication prescribed by a Cape Town mental health hospital.

“He stopped taking his medicine because he said it turned him into a zombie,” she said.

Malgas's lawyer, Shagan Shaun Balram, told the court he was suicidal and had severe depression.