Cape Town - A 16-year-old, who returned to Cape Town after two years in the countryside, where he went to avoid gang violence, was shot dead in Manenberg at the weekend.
He was one of three people, including another teenager, aged 18, who died in suspected gang violence at the weekend. Two shootings took place on Saturday and the other one on Monday.
Provincial police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said there had been no arrests yet.
Two years ago, after a fellow pupil was stabbed in front of him at Phoenix High in Manenberg, Dillan Cornelius’s family sent him to stay with his uncle in Vredendal.
“We feared for his safety,” said his father, André Cornelius.
But he returned home in December, and did not go back to school.
On Saturday evening, Dillan was walking to his home to Beatrix Road after visiting friends at nearby Dina Court when he apparently had an argument with a middle-aged man.
The man went away but came back and allegedly fired at Dillan, hitting him in the arm, leg and abdomen.
The teenager was taken to GF Jooste Hospital where he died.
Police said the gunman ran away, but witnesses said they recognised him and that he had recently been released from prison.
Dillan’s mother, Dianne, said the last time she had seen her son was when he had come to get a friend’s jacket an hour before he was shot.
“I told him, ‘Dillan, I haven’t seen you the whole day, come sit with me’. He replied, ‘I’m coming back now, mommy’.”
She said his death had broken her heart.
Police said an 18-year-old was shot several times on the corner of Ouplaas Street and Main Road in Wesbank at about noon on Saturday.
The motive for the shooting was unknown.
On Monday at about 9am, Alan Boch, 35, was shot in the face three times by an unidentified male while he was washing a neighbour’s taxi not far from his home in Tafelsig.
Boch’s sister, Laetitia Jansen, said she had received an SMS from her aunt, informing her about the shooting.
She said: “We are very emotional and heartsore. “We don’t know why anyone would target him.”
Jansen said a friend of Boch’s had told her the shooting was gang-related, but her brother “was no gangster”.
The family were due to identify his body at the Salt River Mortuary today.