South African couple die after stabbing each other in Ireland

TWO South African families are battling to figure out what led a couple to stab each other in their home in Ireland.

Angelique Billing, 27, died outside her Kildysart home in County Clare in the Republic of Ireland, with her youngest daughter, three-year-old Corne, in her arms on Wednesday night. Her husband, Cornelius “Neels” Billing, 44, a construction project manager, died in his bedroom moments after paramedics reached him.

Police and emergency services workers found the couple’s five-year-old daughter, Pamela, screaming in the couple’s bedroom where she had hidden behind the bed. The two were found when firefight- ers, who were responding to a shop fire in the same street where the family lived, saw Corne struggling to get out from underneath her mother’s body.

The couple, who are from Sundra, between Springs and Delmas in Mpumalanga, moved to Germany last year before moving to Ireland.

Angelique’s best friend, Marietjie Ludeoke, said both families were at a complete loss. “Nobody knows what happened. Nobody knows what sparked this.

“They were such a loving couple whose lives revolved around their children.

“It is just too terrible to think about. It is just too horrible,” Ludeoke said.

Ludeoke said she last spoke to Billing two weeks ago when she phoned to tell her that she was pregnant. “Angelique was my best friend. We shared everything together – news on family, work, home life, everything.

“She never once told me that something was wrong. They moved around a lot because of Neels’s work and I know it was difficult for her, but not so difficult that this would happen.”

Ludeoke said she could not imagine what had happened for her friend and her husband to have killed each other.

“They loved each other so much. For both of them, family was so important. They . . . did everything together.”

Police say they have no other suspects in the killings and both children are in the care of the social health service.