EC taxi leader shot and wounded in her own EL home
A LEADING figure in the province’s taxi industry was shot and wounded inside her East London home yesterday morning.
An unknown visitor who arrived at South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) Eastern Cape leader Noluntu Mahashe’s home while the gunman was fleeing was also shot and injured. A relative escaped injury after a shot fired at her missed.
Eastern Cape health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said both Mahashe and the other injured man were in stable conditions.
The incident occurred shortly before noon. Mahashe, who uses a wheelchair, was in her lounge in Morningside.
No one has been arrested in connection with the shooting and police are following up on leads.
Eastern Cape police said yesterday the outspoken taxi boss, 62, was shot by a lone gunman who had entered her home pretending to be seeking information on how to join the taxi industry.
Mahashe was inside the house with her niece Ntombekhaya Mahashe, the niece’s one-month-old boy and an unidentified domestic worker. The gunman was ushered into the lounge by Ntombekhaya who told the Dispatch she then went into her room to breast-feed her son.
The domestic worker was in another room packing clothes.
“While I was breast-feeding I heard the man say ‘I need some cellphone contacts’. He left the house like someone who had forgotten a phone in the car.
“When he came back he said ‘Ma’am to be honest with you I am here to rob you’. He then fired a gun. I put my son down and came out of the room to investigate. He pointed the gun at me and fired a shot but missed me,” Ntombekhaya said.
She said as the shooter left a car was pulling up in Mahashe’s driveway. “The gunman shot at the driver’s window and wounded the man who was driving. He then ran up the street where a getaway car was waiting,” Ntombekhaya said.
Mahashe managed to call the police. Her niece summoned an ambulance. The two injured people were transported to hospital.
After news of the shooting emerged, taxi bosses from different associations visited her house to comfort her family.
Among them was the president of the Border Alliance Taxi Association, Vuyani Mshiywa, who said: “It is a blessing that [Mahashe] is alive.”
Police spokesman Captain Mluleki Mbi said the motive for the shooting was still unknown. He said police were investigating two cases of attempted murder.