“There was a dispute on the meeting. The reason is still being investigated but it caused on of the men to take out a pistol and shoot three people then himself.
“The lawyers escaped unharmed.” Louis Du Randt, of law firm Du Randt Richards, in Centurion, where the meeting was held, said that there had been no altercation before Mr van Deventer started shooting.
He told local radio station Eyewitness News that when he had tried to stand up, the gunman told him calmly to sit down. He said he then told his own lawyer to stand at the door and shot himself in the head.
Jeffrey Wicks, a spokesman for the ambulance service Netcare 911, said that when paramedics arrived the three men were already dead and a fourth man was critical.
“He had a single gunshot wound to the head and paramedics immediately initiated care,” he said. “He was transported to the hospital where he died shortly after arrival.”