Traders in the busy Manchester Road retail precinct said yesterday’s armed robbery and shooting of a store owner has left them anxious about their safety, warning that crime in the area was on the increase.
At about 2.30 pm, four armed robbers entered a store under the pretext of wanting to warm their food.
They then held up the shop owner and customers and robbed them of cellphones and cash. The owner of the shop, Tamirat Zeleke Abede, was shot in the buttocks.
His brother, who did not want to be named said, “My brother only had the shop for one year. He was shot and he was taken to Northdale Hospital. I am going there soon but my other brother is with him now,” he said.
Another trader in the area said crime was a major concern.
Msunduzi remains under administration
“The staff at my shop saw the men walking down the road. We didn’t hear the shooting but we heard everyone shouting and trying to catch them [the suspects]. Those guys [the people in the shop that were robbed] were very traumatized.
“People on the road tried to catch the suspects but they jumped into a car. This is normal here for us.
“This happens often. People walking on the road often get robbed, we get people just walking into shops and taking things and running away. Especially during this time of the year, during December, it picks up. A few years ago, the shop up the road was robbed. There are a lot of paras [vagrants] stealing from us all the time. It is bad here. Now in December, we have to watch out and be weary,” she said.
She added that security is lacking in the area, and there is not much police presence.
Normally we get municipal staff coming, but they only come to raid foreigners or to see if the vendors have the necessary documents. That’s it. We don’t have police here. Even when we had a looting scare earlier this year, the shops had to fend for themselves, we had to block the road on our own. There wasn’t any police presence.
The owner of a neighbouring shop, Hafiza Hoosen said that there were customers in the shop at the time of the robbery, but when she went to see what was going on she only found Abede, lying on the floor bleeding.
A visibly shaken Hoosen also confirmed that robberies take place often in Manchester Road.
If it’s not the shop owner then it’s the customers who get robbed. This is the first time in a while that someone was shot … I am not okay with this, we need police visibility here.
Police could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.
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