Police have requested the public’s help in finding gunmen responsible for a triple murder outside the Nyanga police station this week.
The men were shot while sitting in their car about 100m from the station on Wednesday night.
Police spokesperson FC van Wyk said officers on duty heard multiple gunshots go off around 10pm, and when they went outside to have a look, they found the men, aged between 18 and 21, dead.
“Members found three victims fatally wounded, one victim lying outside the car, another victim was found sitting sitting in the passenger’s side and a third victim was found few metres away from the vehicle,” Van Wyk said.
The motive for the shooting is not clear, and police are investigating a triple murder, he confirmed.
The families of two of the victims refused to speak to the media yesterday, and the family of the third victim was not at home.
Nyanga Community Policing Forum chairperson Martin Makhasi described the incident as “very sad news”.
“The dying of young men in their teenage years and young adults is always sad, especially the way these men died. The community needs to stand up by tipping-off the police about the whereabouts of these criminals,” said Makhasi.
He said police are not always proactive in finding culprits and depend on community members to be witnesses.
“Police are not sangomas (traditional healers), they cannot pre-empt what is going to happen. In this case they could not have prevented the deaths, but we are hopeful that with the help of the community the suspects will be arrested.
“It seems the suspects planned the murder somewhere, not at the scene, and executed it where it happened,” he said.
Makhasi said communities must stop having fear of reporting crime.
“It can’t be that people did not see anything because at the time of the incident people were still busy on that street.”
Nyanga township, which compromises Crossroads, Philippi, Philippi-East, Samora Machel and parts of Gugulethu, has for the fifth consecutive year retained the dubious title of murder capital of the country, based on the number of killings recorded there over a year.
Statistics released last September indicate that crime in the township is spiralling out of control, and there were 3224 murders reported last year – a 1.2% increase from the previous year.
Van Wyk asked anyone with any informationabout the shooting to contact Nyanga police at 021 380 330 0/6000/3320 or Crime Stop at 086 001 0111.