A Manenberg ouma is lucky to be alive after a bullet grazed her during a shooting between police and skollies on Friday.
However, a police constable was not so lucky and was hit in the leg.
Tagmieda Matthews, 76, says she was sitting in the lounge of her ground floor flat in Grieta Court when she heard the gunshots shortly after 9pm.
The friendly ouma says she heard a cracking sound and when she looked she saw the bullet went through her door, ricocheted off the wooden arm of her couch and grazed her left arm.
“Ek het nog lekker die movie gekyk en chips geëet en toe hoor ons die skote,” she says.
“The bullet came flying through here and grazed me before landing on the floor.”
The ouma says she got a skrik and called a policeman who came to check on her.
“He picked up the bullet and told me to go lie down.”
Captain FC van Wyk says officers of the Stabilisation Unit were deployed to Manenberg following ongoing gang fights and while they were patrolling down Sabie Road several shots were fired at them.
“A 30-year-old constable was wounded in his right upper leg. An attempted murder case was registered for investigation,” he says.
The ouma, who lives in the flat with her brother, children and grandchildren, says she is just glad no one was killed during the shooting.
“I am very lucky to be alive,” she says.
“My brother, who usually watches TV with me, went to sleep early that night, otherwise that bullet would have hit him.
“The wound burnt a little, but I just put on a bietjie Vaseline,” she adds.