Five young men have been gunned down in a massacre on the Cape Flats, Western Cape police said on Tuesday.
Two men entered the back yard of a house in Langa’s Zone 4 shortly before midnight on Monday and opened fire on a group of 10 people, all of them teenage youths or young men, in a wooden hut there.
Police spokesperson Inspector Bernadine Steyn said five of the victims died on the scene.
The first of them, an 18-year-old from New Crossroads, was shot in the back, arm and head. Another 18-year-old, from Langa, and a 20-year-old man, from New Crossroads, were shot in the head.
A 19-year-old, from New Crossroads, was killed by a shot in the neck and the fifth youth, aged 19 and from Nyanga, was shot in the chest.
Two teenagers shot in the legs and back were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. One of them, a 16-year-old, was released from hospital after treatment. The 17-year-old was in a stable condition in hospital.
Steyn said the motive for the shooting was not known, and that the names of the dead would be released only once their next of kin had been informed.
The killers fled the scene on foot. A 22-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday afternoon for the murder of five young men in Langa, Cape Town police said. The man from New Crossroads was arrested just after 5pm in Langa, said Steyn.
The Cape Argus reported on Tuesday that the shootings appeared to be a revenge killing by young gangsters. According to Cape Argus photographer Lulama Zenzile, cousin of one of the murdered teenagers, the incident stemmed from tensions that started several days ago at Oscar Mpetha High School in Nyanga.
”It was a gangster thing; they were fighting over girls,” he said. ”Then one of their friends was shot and killed three days ago in New Crossroads, so they fled to Langa’s Zone 4, where they were hiding in the Wendy house [wooden hut].”
The killers, who had apparently been looking for them at the school earlier in the day, tracked them down. ”It seems two guys came and kicked the door in and started shooting at them,” Zenzile said.
A teenager who had been sleeping in the main house went to the Wendy house to investigate. ”He tried to pick them up but they just fell out of his arms,” Zenzile said. ”He ran to the police station to get help.” — Sapa