Durban - Alonzo Pearson was expected to embark on a cruise with his family to celebrate his 21st birthday next week.
Instead, he is nursing five bullet wounds in hospital after another attempt on his life on Tuesday night.
Wentworth resident Pearson was previously targeted on Christmas Day 2018, when he was shot eight times outside a nearby Engen garage and ended up in the intensive care unit.
Pearson, who turned 21 on Monday, and two cousins were on their way home from a tuckshop when they came under attack.
His mother, Mavis Pearson, said she heard the gunfire and rushed outside to see her son lying on the ground riddled with bullet holes.
The scene in Wentworth where Alonzo Pearson was shot five times during a drive-by shooting. Picture: Leon Lestrade/African News Agency(ANA)
“I picked him up and we put him in the car and rushed him to hospital,” she said.
A nephew sustained a gunshot wound to his elbow and another bullet grazed his back, while her other nephew sustained minor injuries.
Mavis said her son was being targeted because he had been shot in 2018.
Pearson was shot twice in the abdomen, and once each in the back, arm and forehead in last night’s attack.
“Apparently the car involved in the shooting had been circling the area the entire day,” said his mother.
She said the shooters were trying to shut her son up before the trial of her son's shooters starts next week.
The gunmen had violated their bail conditions by being in the area, parking outside her home and intimidating her son and family, she added.
“I’ve asked the police if they are waiting for my son to be in a box before they do anything,” she said.
Alonzo’s father, Malcolm Pearson, said the police had let his family down.
“I’m disgusted with our police. We phone them time and time again, but they don’t do anything to help us,” he said.
Community activist Desmond D’Sa said he heard the shooting because he lived near the crime scene.
“It’s a regular occurrence,” D’Sa said of shootings in the area.
“We’ve spoken to the police and Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant-General Khombinkosi Jula for a special task team, but we’ve been hearing promises for months now. If this does not happen, we will mobilise our people. It’s not their kids, it’s our kids in Wentworth who are dying. Now we will come with bodies in bags to their offices.”
Wentworth Community Policing Forum chairperson Donovan Anderson said the CPF was concerned as Tuesday night’s shooting was the second in the area in just two weeks.
“There have been many random shootings in the area and it seems to be an ongoing thing. We have tried our best to resolve the issue by working with other CPF clusters. “People are angry and living in fear; they are asking us (the CPF) questions we don’t have answers to,” he said.
Anderson said three people were wounded in a drive-by shooting on the corner of Tifflin and Tuin roads two weeks ago.
“We (the CPF) get no answers from police about these ongoing shootings. We have had extra foot patrols, extra police vans but these are not here all the time. And people know that now. We need a specialised task team in Wentworth urgently to deal with the drugs and gangs as there is no faith in the local police from the community,” he said.