Johannesburg - A Soweto woman has died after taking a bullet meant for her son. Tshepo Setlhapelo and his girlfriend Geraldine Buys watched on Saturday night as his mother Julia slipped in and out of consciousness and bled just outside their shack in the Winnie Camp informal settlement in Kliptown.
A bullet meant to kill the young man had passed through his body and ultimately lodged itself in his 57-year-old mother’s chest.
Moments earlier, Setlhapelo had been sitting with Buys on his lap in the front yard of their small shack when three men passed by shortly before 9pm.
Setlhapelo said one of the men – seemingly drunk and aggressive – laughed and shouted: “You’re f***ing in public!”
The protective boyfriend said he told the group to be quiet, prompting them to come storming towards the shack’s entrance.
In a bid to protect himself and his girlfriend, he ran to grab a rock on the ground.
Just then, a deafening gunshot went off. The shot grazed the outside of Tshepo’s ribcage, passed his arm and kept going.
Julia – his mother – who had heard the commotion, rushed out to check on her son, and placed herself in line with the bullet.
The three men then ran from the scene, while neighbours gathered around Julia as she gasped for air.
As the family waited for an ambulance to take Tshepo and Julia to hospital, Aisha Tack, a friend of the family, tried to give the mother mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Tack told The Star she prayed that her still conscious friend would be all right as she was transported to hospital.
“She was still awake at the hospital,” said Tshepo, who was discharged from the facility yesterday. But at the hospital, a while later, as doctors tried to treat the wounded woman, she died on the operating table.
At her home in Kliptown yesterday, friends and family were gathered at the shack to grieve Julia’s death, Buys clutching her and Tshepo’s 14-month-old son.
The family recently had to bury Julia’s sister, and the idea of saying goodbye to another relative so soon was devastating for the tearful group.
Reeling from the ordeal, Tshepo couldn’t say who had fired, or whether all three men were armed, because it was dark.
The family had heard that two men were captured by residents and handed over to the police for firing shots on Saturday night, but Tshepo said he was not sure if any of the men had been in the group that attacked him.
“These gunmen were wearing bright clothes. The one who attacked me was wearing dark clothes. They’re probably not the same group,” he said.
Soweto police spokesman Kay Makhubela said yesterday that no arrests had been made, adding that the motive for the crime was unclear. His information was that it was a lone gunman who had fired on Julia after knocking on her door.
Makhubela said police investigations would determine exactly what had taken place.
The Star