Powerful testimony from former gangster who shot and killed his bro hit hard

POWERFUL TESTIMONY: Christian Ivor Swartz Pics by JP Crouch/Nextis

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AS HE watched the smoke billowing out of his brother's brown leather jacket at a local tavern, Grabouw teenager Ivor Swartz would have known that life as he knew it was about to change forever.

It was a Sunday night a couple of decades ago - when Ivor, who left home in search of himself at the age of 13, was confronted by the monster that tormented his family home for years - his older brother Deon and diè se vrinne.

They got into a scuffle and Ivor and his friend shot Deon.

Dead.

Ivor recalled: "My brother wore a brown leather jacket and I could see the smoke coming out of it, but hy hou vol 'dis nie regte bullets nie' and that he will come back for us.

"Those were the last words I heard from him, he died in hospital that Wednesday."

Deon was the monster Ivor wanted out of his life.

After losing their father when Ivor was just three years old, Deon was supposed to be the man of the house and his younger brothers' role model.

Instead, he would come home late at night and hit holes in the roof of the house with an axe, other times he'd set tyres alight in the home, trying to burn it down.

Once he burned a Shoprite bag and let the plastic drip onto tattoos of their younger brother Peter, who was 10 years old at the time.

Ivor had had enough of the torment.

But in his own words: "I thought that if the monster was going to be out of the picture I'm going to be okay, but then I became the monster."