Magistrate shot dead in South Africa

Cape Town - A Cape Town magistrate was killed in a drive-by shooting during the peak traffic hour yesterday afternoon, police…

Cape Town - A Cape Town magistrate was killed in a drive-by shooting during the peak traffic hour yesterday afternoon, police said.

Mr Pieter Theron (50) was driving in the southern suburb of Plumstead when a man and a woman fired five shots at him from a white car, hitting him in the head and body, a police spokesman, Capt Ettienne Terreblanche, said. Mr Theron, from the nearby Wynberg Magistrate's Court, died at the wheel.

Drive-by shootings have, along with bombings, become common in Cape Town. Most attacks have been linked to a war between the city's drug dealers and a Muslim vigilante group.