Call for Newlands East community to rally together after two fatally shot
The chairperson of a community safety forum in Newlands East says the community must rally together and claim the area back from social ills like gangsterism.
On Tuesday, a teenage boy and a 25-year-old man were killed and another hurt in an apparent gangsterism-related shooting.
They were standing outside a tuckshop on Barracuda Road when gunmen opened fire on them.
One died at the scene, while the two younger victims were rushed to hospital.
The 15-year-old later died.
Alan Peterson of the Newlands East Watch Community Safety says the community is in the clutches of drugs, violence and gangs.
"Your teenager, which you are sending to the shop - what is the guarantees of them coming home safely? We finding that two of those kids that were shot were at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Why they were there that time of the evening, no one knows. But it shouldn't have ended up in this result."
READ: Police hailed after dramatic Higginson Highway shootout
Peterson has urged the community to work together to overcome these social ills.
"We need to stand forward and make a change and stand up and say enough is enough. We need change in our community and we need to take our communities back and I don't mean by vigilantism. We need to stand forward and say that we need our communities to be a safer place.
"And when we start those platforms by working with NGOs, NPOs or neighbourhood watches, CPFs as well as the police, because they themselves have a difficult challenge. We need to stand forward and create the irritation in the police station."
Charges of murder and attempted murder were opened.
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