South African Kills 3 Blacks in Rampage

PRETORIA, South Africa — A member of a white supremacist movement methodically opened fire with an automatic pistol on “every black he could see” today, killing three blacks and wounding at least 10 in downtown Pretoria before police captured him, police said.

Police identified the man as Barend Hendrik Strydom, a former police officer who resigned in February while under investigation as a member of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, a militant white supremacist group opposed to granting the black majority equal rights.

The 23-year-old man, who was dressed in camouflage fatigues, shouted that he was the leader of a shadowy terrorist organization called the White Wolves as he moved along the sidewalk near the State Theater shooting blacks with a 9-mm. automatic pistol.

Police said two black women and a black man were killed and 10 were wounded. The area was stained with blood and the capital was stunned by the mid-afternoon rampage.

Brig. Leon Mellet, spokesman for Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok, said Strydom “just started shooting every black he could see. He went totally mad.”

In a statement to the ruling National Party’s Transvaal province convention in Pretoria today, Vlok said he had asked national police commissioner Gen. Hennie de Witt to investigate Strydom’s claim to leadership of the “White Wolves.”

Police officers arrested Strydom after a two-block chase past screaming pedestrians soon after the shooting spree, witnesses said.