Nahemia Classen (11) was caught in the crossfire of rival gangs just meters away from his Parkwood home on Monday. The child was rushed to ICU in a critical condition and later placed on life support and was declared dead on Tuesday.
Nehemiah Claasen. Picture supplied.
CAPE TOWN – The Parkwood community is reeling following the murder of yet another young child.
Nahemia Classen (11) was caught in the crossfire of rival gangs just meters away from his Parkwood home on Monday.
The child was rushed to ICU in a critical condition and later placed on life support and was declared dead on Tuesday.
The Grassy Park community policing forum (CPF) said that drastic action was needed to curb the ongoing gang violence plaguing Parkwood as gunshots ring out at any time of the day and night.
CPF chairperson Melvin Jonkers: “We strongly condemn what has happened in Parkwood. This is not the first such incident. We cannot condone these actions, the shooting of gangsters almost on a daily basis.”
At around the same time last year, in the same street, an 8-year-old boy was wounded while walking to a shop.
Before that, in September 2017, the murder of seven-year-old Ezra Daniels rocked the same community. The child was playing with a friend in Abdullah Moosa Road when he was killed in a hail of bullets.
Jonkers said that residents were devastated.
“On Monday night the CPF and police attended a prayer walk in the Parkwood area. The community in the area came together and from the reaction that I saw while being Parkwood, we can see that the people are up in arms about what happened, the people are not happy.”
