Cape Town detectives are investigating the circumstances of a mass shooting in Khayelitsha that claimed six lives, on Sunday evening.
Khayelitsha mass shooting: What’s the latest?
In a statement, police spokesperson Brigadier Novella Potelwa confirmed the incident took place on the corner of Maphongwana and Idada Street in Site C, shortly after 20:00.
Residents in the area alerted police after the haunting sound of rapid gunfire ruptured across the neighbourhood. In a statement to IOL News, a source that resides close to the crime scene described the moment gunfire rang off as like “it was raining bullets.”
“There were so many, I lost count. I never heard so many bullets in my life being fired. I could not tell if it was automatic machines or not,” the source said.
From what we understand, police arrived at the scene and found the bodies of six male victims strewn on the street, with pools of blood and shell casings everywhere.
My sources tell me they have counted over five bodies on the ground. The shooting happened this evening in Khayelitsha Site C. Police are yet to confirm the number of fatalities. It is not yet clear what really happened here pic.twitter.com/Z8BrN3zhPo
— Veve (@LudidiVelani) May 8, 2022
Five of the victims were declared dead on the scene, and the sixth was rushed to a nearby hospital but, unfortunately, they didn’t make it.
“Organised crime detectives are hard at work busy with an investigation which was initiated immediately,” Potelwa noted.
The suspects involved in the latest Khayelitsha mass shooting are unknown at this stage, and, even worse, believed to be still at large.
This is the third mass killing in the span of two months, in Khayelitsha.
Two of these shootings took place a few days apart in March 2022. The first claimed five lives in Endlovini informal settlement. These deaths were followed up by six more bodies mowed in Enkanini.
The Khayelitsha mass shootings are, as things stand, all unsolved.
“Details of the deceased persons are currently being determined,” Potelwa said.
This is a developing story.