The widow of a slain Cape Flats “gangster lawyer” Noorudien Hassan has described how her husband’s masked killers got out of a white bakkie to shoot him dead before speeding off into the night.
While police have yet to make arrests, Mehraaj Hassan said the gunmen wore black-and-white checked scarves over their faces when they murdered her husband in front of their Burwood Road property in Crawford last Monday.
In an interview with the Weekend Argus, the widow broke her silence on Thursday, speaking of the events that led up to Hassan’s death.
Mehraaj said it was part of her husband’s evening routine to feed the fish and switch on the lights at their Crawford property.
The family lives in Lansdowne.
She says Hassan’s childhood friend, a police reservist, had visited him and offered to drive him to Crawford.
It was about 10pm when Hassan and his friend locked up in Crawford and, as they got into the friend’s silver Mercedes Benz, a white bakkie pulled up.
Gunmen, with black-and-white checked scarves over their faces, got out and opened fire, Mehraaj said.
She says Hassan was still alive, and the friend drove to the Lansdowne Police Station to report the incident before racing off to Kingsbury Hospital.
He contacted Hassan’s brother to tell him what had happened.
Mehraaj says her mom in law woke her up to say Hassan had been shot and she rushed to hospital.
But five minutes after she arrived, doctors told her that her husband’s heart could not cope with the extent of his injuries and that he passed away.
Mehraaj says her world was shattered when she realised her greatest fear – that her husband would be murdered – had become a reality.
“I hope he never felt any pain when it happened to him,” she said.
Hassan’s home in Lansdowne had been pipe- bombed in 2014 and Mehraaj says: “We were fearful for a very long time.”
She described Hassan as a playful and romantic husband, a doting father and a dutiful family man.