There were comforting hugs and tears of grief in a North West church yesterday when friends and family bade farewell to a young woman whose life was ended by a hitman's bullet.
But they said that, instead of mourning 26-year-old Chanelle Henning's death, they chose to celebrate her life.
On Tuesday last week, Henning had just dropped her four-year-old son off at a preschool in Faerie Glen, Pretoria East, when one of two men on a motorbike shot at her and sped off after a bullet ripped into her chest.
The men on the bike had apparently been following her for a week. She had, at one stage, reportedly confronted her followers, waving a fist at them.
Yesterday, mourners wept as they sang along to Marcus van Loggenberg's rendition of Henning's favorite song, Lig Jou Hande na Bo, by Juanita du Plessis.
Henning loved the gospel song and would play it loudly in her car.
Her parents, Ivan and Sharon Saincic, sat in the front row of the church with Henning's estranged husband, Nico, who had walked into the church carrying their blond son.
During the service, the boy moved between his father, grandparents and friends of the family.
Tears welled up in the bereaved family's eyes as a slide show of Henning was projected on large screens, portraying a beautiful woman full of life.
Her 22-year-old sister, Monique Habberton, struggled to finish reading her tribute, overcome by tears.
She said: "Part of me died with my sister that day.
"But the following day was worse as we arrived at the morgue to identify her body."
But Habberton managed to elicit giggles from the congregation when she said she would remember her sister who was sometimes brunette and most of the time blonde.
As much as she did not want to say goodbye, "I thank God for her life though it was for a short while; she is happier with our Father," she said.
Henning was to be cremated.
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