Gangster’s bullet rips apart family’s future
Whaseelah Kader with her 13-year-old son, Riyaad, who was paralysed from the waist down after being caught in gang crossfire in Hanover Park. Whaseelah Kader with her 13-year-old son, Riyaad, who was paralysed from the waist down after being caught in gang crossfire in Hanover Park.
A city mother is battling to come to terms with the news that her 13-year-old son will never walk again after being paralysed by a gangster’s bullet.
Whaseelah Kader, of Hanover Park, a single mother of three, is trying to work out how she will afford the necessary care and a wheelchair for her son Riyaad.
Despite being confined to a hospital bed, recovering from the shooting and a collapsed lung, Riyaad was more worried about his mother’s predicament than his own future, Kader said on Monday.
“At the moment the doctors are keeping him sedated and they say he is stable and out of danger. His lung collapsed after the shooting and he has always been asthmatic,” she said after visiting her son at Groote Schuur Hospital.
Riyaad was shot in the back while he was sitting with his brother Imtiyaaz, 17, on a staircase in the St Lucia Court flats in Hanover Park last Thursday.
“The doctors said he would need a wheelchair and I don’t even know how I’m going to get him a wheelchair, because we can’t afford it,” said Kader.
She said her son loved to play soccer and pool.
“He is crazy about soccer and was very active although he is asthmatic.
“It is very difficult when two of your children have been shot. My 17-year-old son, who was shot in the hand, feels very bad that he couldn’t have done something for his younger brother.”
The unemployed mother, who receives a child support grant and is also supported by her pensioner mother, is spending each day at her son’s bedside.
The Grade 6 pupil still can’t breathe on his own and will be in intensive care for the next two weeks.
Riyaad’s 26-year-old cousin, Yumnah Kader, who lives with the family, said: “People never complained about him because he is so sweet. You could send him to the shop and he would always go.
“On Sunday he started shaking while he spoke to his mom, because he said he knew he is paralysed from the waist down (and) didn’t know how his mother would cope. He stopped talking to us after that.”
Hanover Park Community Police Forum spokesman Weldon Cameron said: “Police are working proactively by following up on information, having regular vehicle checkpoints in the area and carrying out various operations.”
During an anti-crime march on Sunday, Western Cape Community Safety MEC Dan Plato urged church leaders and religious groups in Hanover Park to combat gang violence.
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