London Evening Standard/London

A leading London artist was shot dead as he tackled robbers who burst into his first wedding anniversary party.

Clinton De Menezes, 43, bundled his wife Nicola Saward and their daughter Eva, seven, into a bathroom when the robbers forced open a door. He was shot in the chest when he went to the aid of a friend who was trying to fend off one of the gunmen with a plastic chair.

As De Menezes lay dying his wife kissed him and then closed his eyes.

A friend said she thanked him for being a loving father and husband. The distraught girl also said a tearful goodbye.

The horror attack came when four thieves climbed onto a balcony during the party in Durban, South Africa. The couple, schoolfriends who got together a decade ago, had flown to Durban to celebrate their anniversary with best man Simon Malpas and his wife Amanda in Westville, miles from a township once known as the country’s murder capital.

De Menezes has had work exhibited in galleries across London and in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The family lived in Hanwell, west London, until last July when Saward moved to Kenya with her job as a manager for oil firm Tullow.

Malpas described how four men forced open the door in the early hours of New Year’s Eve. He said: “We turned down the music and saw there was a man on the balcony. I ran towards him and hit him with a plastic chair.”

Malpas grappled with the assailants as they tried to force their way inside. De Menezes hid his wife and daughter in a bathroom before coming to his aid. Malpas said: “I was hanging on for dear life. Clinton must have come up behind me. I had no idea he was there ... the next thing I hear a loud bang. I don’t know how they missed me, I was standing right in front of them.”

Malpas’s wife told how Saward closed her husband’s eyes, kissed him and thanked him for being a loving father and husband. Eva, who had been hidden in a laundry basket, also said goodbye. Fiona Des Fontaine, a pastor who presided over the couple’s wedding, yesterday led his funeral in Durban.

The gang fled with three mobile phones and a wallet. Police later arrested four men and recovered a 9mm pistol which they claim was the weapon used in the murder. The killing has again thrown a spotlight on the scale of violent crime in South Africa with murders running at the rate of 50 a day.