Pretoria - While the police investigate the shooting at a Ga-Rankuwa tavern last week, residents are making plans to protect themselves from more attacks.
The community around the KO Tavern, where masked gunmen shot and injured seven people and left two dead, remains in shock following the random attack.
Many of the residents, who said they feared speaking to the media due to fear of retaliation by the killers, said yesterday that they did not know where the attacks stemmed from or who the shooters were targeting.
A resident who was at the tavern at the time of the shootings said he was sitting in a corner enjoying his drinks when he heard repeated shots.
“I didn’t move because I could not see where the shooters were or who they were trying to shoot. At one point I heard people screaming that they should switch off the lights, but the shots kept coming.
“I simply kept my head down until the noise stopped, and when I got up I saw the guy who was sitting in front of me lying in a pool of blood.”
Community leaders said a decision was taken to hold a community meeting this Sunday in order to help residents set up community policing forums and to start patrolling the area.
“We were caught off-guard this time around and we just want to start setting up systems in order to help protect us from these attacks.”
Police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Sello said there was no update on the matter, but investigations were continuing.
According to the police, gunmen driving a silver VW Polo opened fire randomly at people who were sitting outside the outlet on Friday night.
The incident took place just before midnight, bringing the total number of people killed at drinking holes by trigger-happy individuals across the country to 24.
Although shootings also took place in Soweto, Katlehong and KwaZulu-Natal, the police have insisted that there was no reason to draw parallels between the shootings.
Pretoria News