White Parklands resident accused of shooting black man in race attack
Victim says he was told: “I don’t need k****rs in my street”
A white Parklands resident appeared briefly in the Cape Town Magistrates Court on Tuesday, charged with assault following the shooting of a black man with a pellet gun in October 2016.
The case was postponed to next month.
Magistrate Alfreda Lewis read out the charge to Sydney Hillman, 53, who said he would be represented by legal aid lawyers.
Dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt with black stripes and dark grey jeans with cowboy boots, Hillman chatted to a person sitting next to him in the public gallery and often broke into laughter.
The court appearance follows the shooting with a pellet gun of Luvuyo Popo, 34, on October 19 2016.
Popo, who lives in Dunoon’s New Rest informal settlement, told GroundUp he had spent three weeks at Cape Town’s Somerset Hospital. The pellet was still stuck in his body, he said, and doctors had told him it could not safely be removed.
According to hospital documents seen by GroundUp, he was shot in the left scapula and the pellet bullet is in the thoracic cavity.
Popo said that he was pushing a trolley loaded with planks of wood and discarded and soiled carpets which he was collecting from construction sites in the Parklands area. He intended to use them to revamp his shack.
He said a white man standing on the balcony of his double storey house in Nottingham Close, shouted at him to “Go back where you come from I don’t need k****rs in my street.”
He said he had kept on pushing his trolley and was collecting a discarded wooden door from a neighbour when he felt something burning in his shoulder. He had fallen to the ground and another resident of the street had come to help him and had called the police and an ambulance. The man who shot him had ridden his motorbike up to the scene and started laughing while at the same time hurling racial slurs at him, Popo said.
He said the bullet had damaged his arm and he could no longer do temporary gardening jobs as he had done before.
He had upgraded his shack to a four room double-storey shack and rented out the other rooms to make ends meet.
Hillman left the court before GroundUp was able to interview him. The case will be heard on 2 February.
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