Deadly: Leighton Fynn is one of the young people who was killed on the streets of Wentworth in Durban
“Love is lacking in most families because, if there was a lot of love, the children wouldn’t be where they are. There is that hunger and thirst for love and drug people make like they can father them, and then abuse them and send them to shoot people.”
Charles Parker
“Leighton was a saint. I can’t think of anything he had done wrong. He always went to church with his mother. He listened; he never got a hiding. He was studying hard for matric, and his marks went up.”
These were the bittersweet words of Tyrone Fynn, 47, the father of 17-year-old Leighton Fynn, his youngest son, who was gunned down in Richard Winn Road in Durban’s suburb of Wentworth on his way to winter holiday classes on 27 June.
Police arrested 18-year-old Dondre Addison on 1 July and he appeared in the Durban magistrate’s court on 7 July facing a charge of murder — apparently after his grandmother and aunt handed him over to police — where he has been remanded in custody.
He is expected to appear in court again in August. But whether he will apply for bail is debatable, because residents believe his family handed him over to the police for his own safety.
Revenge killings are a reality in Wentworth, where groups of five, six, 10 young people huddle together on street corners.
Leighton is one of dozens of young people — residents and local pastors say as many as 80 — who have been murdered in this impoverished working-class suburb where drugs are the fuel of the underworld ruled by two gangs, the Cartel and Hollywood.
On 2 July, five days after Leighton’s murder, Jose Ogle went on a shooting spree, killing two people and injuring another two who were standing on a street corner, before turning the gun on himself.
The following week, a 17-year-old, allegedly conspiring with three friends, ordered an e-hailing taxi and then robbed the driver at gunpoint. But the driver pulled out his own firearm and shot and killed two of the young people. One died at the scene and the other later, in hospital. A teenage girl survived and has been arrested.
Pastors in Wentworth are distressed about the rate at which they are burying the young.
Charles Parker, deacon of the Christ the King Catholic Church, has a front-row seat to the slaughter.
He buried Leighton and many others, but is reluctant to quantify the killings, and instead rattles off at least five multiple shooting incidents in recent weeks. “I can’t even count. I am lost, because even this year … from Christmas time they were dying in fours and threes, and they are still dying,” he said.
He blames the problem on uncaring families and the manipulation of young people by drug lords.
Leighton Fynn is one of the young people who was killed on the streets of Wentworth in Durban, despite the vigilance of his father, Tyrone (left).
“Love is lacking in most families because, if there was a lot of love, the children wouldn’t be where they are. There is that hunger and thirst for love and drug people make like they can father them, and then abuse them and send them to shoot people,” he said.
These killings are then followed by revenge killings.
“It is anger and a grudge, and payback that is destroying the community,” said Parker. “Anger can only be overcome by love.
“There are a lot of single mothers, and it is very difficult for them to bring up a boy, but there is also good in the community and those who come from loving families.”
Parker said the churches are involved but they get little cooperation from the police. “At the moment it just seems unwinnable … there is a breakdown of the law”.
Alistair Barclay, the pastor of The Privileged Church, said it was sad that young people were targets.
“Before, gangsterism and crime involved older guys and now 13-year-olds are being recruited. I buried a 13-year-old who was shot in Hime Street. I thought he was shot innocently, but apparently he was shooting earlier, and they came and retaliated and shot him,” Barclay said.
Barclay blamed the gangs for the violence in Wentworth. He said the police knew where the drug hotspots were but also didn’t think the police were the answer to the problem and that only youth finding God would change the drug problem.
“People say drug money is easy money, fast money. But it is not easy money, it will cost you your life. We have buried too many young people who have been shot,” he said.
Churches have formed the Communities Building Credible Ownership KZN group, which has had several meetings with the senior provincial police since September last year, but pastors and residents said not enough is being done.
The latest police statistics show there were 104 attempted murders reported to Wentworth police station in 2021-22, up 36.8% from 76 in 2020-21, while murders for the same period increased from 18 to 22. It is among the top 30 police stations in the country for its rate of attempted murder.
Statistics for 2022-23 are yet to be released. The crimes Wentworth’s residents refer to took place after the release of the 2021-22 statistics.
KwaZulu-Natal’s senior police spokesperson, Brigadier Jay Naicker, said there had been “a number of drug-related murders” in Wentworth but declined to confirm whether there had been 80 killings over the past two years. He said not all murders were related to the drug turf war.
“Over the years there have been numerous interventions by police to address the high drug use which is fuelling a turf war between local drug dealers from the community,” Naicker said. “Scarce police resources have been moved from other policing precincts to address the drug problem at Wentworth.”
“Before, gangsterism and crime involved older guys and now 13-year-olds are being recruited. I buried a 13-year-old who was shot in Hime Street. I thought he was shot innocently, but apparently he was shooting earlier, and they came and retaliated and shot him.”
Alistair Barclay
He said the district commissioner had met Wentworth’s residents and was driving operations with the station commissioner.
“Community policing structures are active and meet with the station commissioner regularly. The district task team, provincial task team, metro police and anti-gang unit have continuously been deployed to supplement security forces on the ground to curb serious crimes and drug use.”
But Naicker conceded that “urgent intervention” was necessary to confront the social ills in the suburb that are “leading to children turning to drugs use and crime, as police alone cannot stem this trend. We are addressing children at schools to make them aware of the dangers of drugs and involvement in criminal activities, however we have no control over them when they go to their homes.”
Commenting on the shooting of the e-hailer taxi driver, police spokesperson Thenjiswa Ngcobo said an inquest and armed robbery docket had been opened after two suspects were shot at Pascal Grove and Mia Avenue.
When the Mail & Guardian visited Wentworth, news of the death in hospital of one of the latest victims of a gang-related shooting lit up social media.
A resident, who asked not to be named, said: “We will need to be home with the curtains closed by 3pm or 4pm latest before it gets dark because there will be revenge shooting tonight.”
Even on an ordinary day, he said, “it is scary … you are too scared to walk in the road because you don’t know when the next bullet is going to come”.
Tyrone Fynn always looked out for his son when he left the house to ensure he safely traversed the shooting “hotspot” but even his vigilance and love were insufficient.
“He would always go to church with his mom, turn off the radio at 7.30am and be off, and a lump would come in my throat. That morning he left, he did the same thing,” Fynn recalled.
“I am an electrician and I have been unemployed for a while, but my main worry was to get him to varsity. He wanted to do accountancy — he wanted to be a chartered accountant. He picked up his mark to 95%, and I said ‘Son, what happened to the other five?’ I am still going to receive his latest report and that is going to break me.
“There is a quadratic equation he was working on, and it is still there in his room. I would always help him with his maths. This week he was supposed to be on a camp for accounting and maths but he is just not here,” Fynn said, tears filling his eyes.