On Wednesday night, a fatal shooting occurred in Lansdowne, Cape Town, leaving a man dead inside a vehicle.
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According to News24, around 19:50pm, police officers responded to the incident at the junction of Racecourse and Flamingo Roads.
According to Western Cape police spokesperson Warrant Officer Joseph Swartbooi, the victim suffered several gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
‘The unknown suspects fled the scene, and they are yet to be arrested, and the motive for this attack is now the subject of an investigation by the South African Police Service,’ Swartbooi added.
Images captured at the site revealed a concentration of bullet holes clustered on one of the vehicle’s windows.
Rafique Foflonker, spokesperson for the Lansdowne Community Policing Forum, expressed that residents were gripped by fear.
‘Residents are always wondering if they’re next, feeling like hostages in their own homes,’ he said.
He emphasised the importance of residents collaborating with law enforcement, urging them to report criminal activities rather than glorifying them.
‘The criminals are our children, and we coexist with them, but it’s our duty as law-abiding citizens of this country to report any suspicious activity to the police.’
Jasmine Schoonrad, a 52-year-old resident of Hanover Park, shared that her late mother’s residence was merely a six-minute walk from the location of the shooting on Wednesday night.
Unfortunately, they had been unable to lay her mother to rest, as she passed away three weeks prior due to cancer.
‘We were supposed to bury her on 13 April, but due to a gang violence incident on Thursday of that week, we couldn’t,’ she lamented.
‘My fear [with these shootings] is [it] disrupting my mother’s funeral and risking people’s lives since our house is adjacent to the main house.’
‘I just want to give my mother a dignified send-off, but I can’t because of the constant shootings and killings,’ she said.
Mark Palmer (40) expressed concern that Lansdowne was progressively transforming into a hotspot for gang activity and violence.
‘The gang violence here is becoming the norm, but our lives are in great danger,’ he said.
‘I attended [Police] Minister Bheki Cele’s imbizo in Hanover Park a week ago, and I hope that everything the residents told him didn’t fall on deaf ears,’ Palmer added.
‘You need nine lives to live here because you can get caught in the crossfire while going to the nearest spaza shop and perish just like that,’ he said.
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Picture: Rehana Saal / Facebook