by Kirk Olivier

Created on: June 16, 2008   Last Updated: January 05, 2012

He came into our lives in 1995, his name was William Hammond. He was 7 years old and in grade one at school with our second born son Russell. They met on the first day of school and immediately hit it off and became best friends. To Russell, William was his home conversation. William and I did this and that. William was a kind hearted, respectful and very friendly little boy. It wasn't long before William had become part of our lives and a new "adopted" member of our family. He would spend weekends and holidays with us and when not at our house, Russell would visit his family, who pretty much thought the same as we did. These two boys had become closer than friends, they were brothers from different parents.

William lived quite far from the school they attended, so it became a regular thing for him to be dropped at our house early in the morning before school, when he would walk in the door at 06:30 and "ask is my breakfast and coffee ready?", and would return from school every afternoon with Russell, to wait for his lift home. This would be the time that my wife would make sure that all the homework was completed. Like normal boys they had their days of getting up to mischief, but this was always good clean fun. We lived in a relatively safe neighborhood so they would often walk to the nearby supermarket after school.

As the years went by, William became closer to us. He would often join us on camping trips and even started to call my wife mom and me ballie (a word used in South Africa for old man), not to say I was old back then, but all our children called me that. To us this was the greatest thing, it meant that he was happy to accept us as his "adoptive" family as he also referred to all of our children as his brothers and sisters. Well for six and a half years this went on, never a fight or disagreement between Russell and William.

In July 2002, William and Russell were now in grade seven and the big boys of the junior school they attended. We went on a one week holiday to the Drakensberg, (the most spectacular holiday destination), as usual William and Russell were with us. We climbed a mountain during a days hiking, where Russell, William and our youngest daughter Tiffany carved their names in a rock and said they would be best friends forever. Little did we know that day that all of our lives would soon be changed by the escalating violent crime in South Africa.

Early in September we heard that our oldest daughter was expecting her first child. We were

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