S v Mshumpa and Another was a South African case with special significance for the law of persons and succession.
Melissa Shelver, a young pregnant woman, was shot in the abdomen with the (successful) intention of killing her unborn child.
In order to make the attack appear genuine, and thus to clear himself of suspicion, Best had arranged for Mshumpa to shoot him as well.
It found that the risk of death to the mother was eminently foreseeable in the act of shooting (it was established that she would have died had she not received medical treatment),[2] and that dolus eventualis could not be excluded merely because the shooter's intention was only to kill the foetus.
[7][8] The court also had to determine whether Mshumpa's intentional killing of Shelver's unborn child amounted to the crime of murder.