Colleagues of the Tembisa Hospital nurse who was gunned down last week remembered her at memorial service.

Nurses gathered at the Tembisa Christian Church for the memorial service of their murdered colleague Lebo Monene. Lwandile Bhengu

Tembisa Hospital board chairperson Sonnyboy Masingi has apologised to the public for temporarily closing the hospital after one of its employees was gunned down, and has also called for security reform.

The hospital was closed for some hours on Tuesday last week after nursing assistant and mother of two, Lebo Monene was shot dead in the hospital parking lot, allegedly by her boyfriend.

Speaking at her memorial service on Tuesday, Masingi said that it had been a desperate situation that called for “desperate measures”.

“On the day that this incident happened, the hospital was closed for several hours. Desperate situations call for desperate measures. There was a need to do that and I want you to know that it was not because we undermine the community we service.

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“When the CEO called me several times, until I was detected by the communications manager who sent me alarm bells to tell me that one of us is no more, and that a shooting had happened inside the hospital,” he said.

Monene’s alleged killer is the father of one of her two sons. The constable gained access to the hospital using a car with police blue lights. Monene’s family said the couple had broken up and that their relationship had been “toxic”.

The man is currently in hospital after he turned the gun on himself.

Masingi said the tragedy could not have been “stopped at the door”.

“As the board and executive, we went into a meeting discussing issues of security at the hospital and improving CCTV cameras.

Trust

“The question we also asked ourselves, if the law enforcement agencies that we trust with our lives uses a state vehicle and gain entrance in the way that it happened, how are we going to deal with the issue of security in our hospital.

“I would like to say that we really need to revisit security in our hospitals, not just at Tembisa Hospital,” he said.

He also called on hospital CEOs who were present at the memorial to take up the cause of re-evaluating security in hospitals.

He said:

Monene was described as a cheerful woman who always put her patients first.

She will be buried on Saturday at Marulaneng Village, Mokopane.