- Elsies River Community Policing Forum raises concern over surge in gun-related violence.
- Majority of victims are young men, prompting urgent query: Where are the guns originating from?
- Calls for decisive action from authorities to curb escalating violence, with at least eight deaths since February.
Where are all the guns coming from?
That is the question the Elsies River Community Policing Forum (ECPF) is asking. The question arises after a bloody couple of weeks in TygerBurger’s distribution areas. What is particularly scary is that it is mostly young men who die in gun violence.
At least eight young men were killed since February. Rodney Harris, a 14-year-old, just went to the local spaza shop and was shot multiple times and died on the scene. In Eerste River a young man was stabbed to death.
The previous week another young man died, while eight others were shot during a mass shooting.
Imraahn Mukkadem from the ECPF says things are getting out of hand. “Where are all the guns coming from? So many incidents with multiple shooters and multiple guns. We as the community of Elsies River refuse to live in a war zone, this is not Gaza, we should not be fearing for our children when they go to the shop or come out of school. We need maximum response by the police,” says Mukkadam.
Mukkadam says they have a gun violence pandemic on hand. “We need an emergency response to get all the guns off the streets. If we need to call in the army again to restore calm then so be it, but the current level of violence is intolerable. We had two boys killed since last week and another two were killed at a party two weeks ago,” says Mukkadam.