Shock after triple shooting at shop

MOMENTS after hearing gunfire, residents in Athlone discovered the bodies of three men riddled with bullets in their shop.

“There was also a woman. She survived. She was shot in the hand and it looked like her head as well,” a resident, who did not want to be named, said yesterday.

“We could hear machine guns for, like, five minutes.”

Police spokesman Frederick van Wyk confirmed there had been a shooting at about 10.40pm in Veld Road. He said two men from Tanzania died at the scene and that a third man died in hospital.

The woman was in a serious condition in hospital, Van Wyk said.

When the Cape Times visited the scene yesterday, a relative of one of the murdered men walked near their shop.

He said his uncle, Abdallah Alli, 37, had been killed.

Another resident from Tanzania said his friends, whom he identified only as Ktuta and Chibu, were the other two victims.

Ktuta had arrived in Cape Town from Tanzania about eight months ago, while Chibu had been in Cape Town for 10 years.

Neighbours said the trio had worked at a home converted into a small shop and had been good neighbours.

“It’s shocking. This doesn’t happen here,” one said.

Another resident said that before the shooting, he had seen four men walking near the shop.

Afterwards, he said, they left in a cream bakkie.