S. African Who Killed 39 Blacks Given 20 Years

A white man who killed 39 blacks while working as a security guard was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison. He had been convicted of murder in seven of the cases.

Judge Lionel Melunsky chastised police for their failure to arrest Louis van Schoor sooner, saying Van Schoor “should have been stopped in his tracks” years ago.

Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty or a long jail term, and the time Van Schoor will serve is short compared with other mass killers sentenced recently in South Africa.

The fatal shootings came between 1986 and 1989, when Van Schoor, 40, was working as a security guard for homes and businesses in the southern coastal city of East London.

He quit the job in 1989 after publicity about his shooting record and was charged last year with 18 counts of murder and 13 of attempted murder. Police said there was insufficient evidence to charge him in all the shootings.

He pleaded innocent but was convicted in April of seven counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder.

Van Schoor maintained that all the shootings were justifiable, and a police inquest after the 26th death exonerated him. A police spokesman at that time described Van Schoor simply as “a bloody efficient security guard.”