Final resting place for Valentino

Cape Flats sees spate of gruesome deaths as police minister insists ‘we are turning the tide’

VALENTINO Grootetjie, 5, will be buried today, a week after he was shot dead in an alleged gang shootout in the backyard of his Lavender Hill home.

The Cape Flats continue to reel from several gruesome murders over the festive season.

According to the Western Cape Department of Health’s forensic pathology stats from December 15 to 21, 130 people were killed in the province, with 84 of those murders in the Cape Town metro.

Valentino’s killing is the latest in a spate of murders in the province in recent months, despite the deployment of the army to the Cape Flats in July this year to curb gang violence.

Several murders were recorded this past week, including one of a man who was shot and killed along the M5 in Lavender Hill on Christmas Eve, while in Kraaifontein a 28-year-old man was shot and killed on Christmas morning.

On Christmas evening a man was also shot and killed on the corner of Dada and Nomyayi streets in Joe Slovo and two women, aged 54 and 56, were killed in Ravensmead.

Despite these murders, Minister of Police Bheki Cele declaring yesterday that serious crimes, including murder and attempted murder, had declined for the first time in five years.

Yesterday Chadwin Isaacs and Ricardo Hoffmeester, who were arrested for Valentino’s murder, appeared at the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court.

The men face one count of murder and another of attempted murder in relation to the shooting of a 22-yearold man during the same incident.

Valentino was killed at his home while running to protecting his 2-yearold brother.

The two accused are expected back in court on January 23 for a bail application.

Valentino’s funeral service will take place today at the Levana Primary School in Lavender Hill.

Yesterday, while the family prepared for the funeral and received donations towards the service, residents questioned police efforts to combat crime in the area.

In September, President Cyril Ramaphosa extended the deployment of 1 322 SANDF members to the province.

Initially, the army was deployed for Operation Lockdown to the 10 most crime-affected police stations. But this has done little to stem gang violence or crime

Activist Lucinda Evans said the army had been visible in the area, especially this past week.

Cele yesterday decried the trend of child murders in the province, stating that more needed to be done to prevent them.

“There is some abnormality here; even when wars are fought women and children are spared. Whoever causes the death of a 5-year-old, we need to respond quickly,” he said.

“We will be paying our final respects to the family, but those things should not be happening and should be prevented at all costs.”

Questioned about whether he believed the SANDF had been effective in the province, Cele said there was still time before the deployments ended.

He said while Lavender Hill originally had not been on the list of stations for the army to monitor, it relied on crime patterns to determine deployments.

“Now and again we assist, even the stations where the army is deployed, some of them were not originally on the list. So we assess and see where we can shift; if we squeeze crime somewhere it will shift and we have to assess the new patterns and work on that.”

Cele said 2 615 arrests had been made since the army’s deployment, with 2 001 suspects still in custody, 288 on bail and 167 already convicted.

“We had Operation Thunder, brought police from other provinces, extra resources, the formation of the Anti-Gang Unit, the deployment of SANDF; we are beginning to turn the tide,” he said.