With her hands clamped tightly over her ears as she lay completely motionless beneath a bed, a deeply traumatised Cape Town woman prayed for one thing and one thing only in the darkness – that her cellphone would not ring.
Hidden on the cold floor inside a tiny bedroom while heavy-calibre bullets ripped through her family home in Strandveld Street, Wesbank, the survivor feared that even the slightest, most mundane sound would immediately reveal where she was hiding to the ruthless killers executing her family in the next room.
But despite desperately covering her ears, the terrified relative said she could still hear every single gunshot, every agonising scream, and every dinner plate smashing onto the floor. Most heartbreaking of all, she was forced to listen to the terrified cries of her 9-year-old relative as merciless gunmen stormed into the suburban house and opened fire, ultimately killing four of her loved ones in a brutal massacre she hauntingly described as “something out of a war movie”.
The weekend bloodbath has once again highlighted the severe crisis of violence on the Cape Flats. The deceased victims, whose lives were brutally cut short, have been officially identified as Washiela, Liesl, Shireen, and Marius Willemse. The police have confirmed that they were all between the ages of 32 and 39.
The woman who miraculously survived the massacre is directly related to the three slain women. Her identity is currently being strictly withheld by the authorities and the media for urgent security reasons, as the killers remain on the loose.
Tragically, the 9-year-old boy who was also shot during the terrifying attack is currently fighting to recover in a local hospital. Shireen Willemse, one of the family members who was gunned down in the living room massacre, is the mother of the wounded nine-year-old boy.
Western Cape health department spokesperson Dwayne Evans provided a brief but crucial update on the young victim's medical status, stating that the boy was “in a stable condition”.
Warning: The following details of the attack may upset some readers.
Speaking exclusively to News24, the surviving relative said she still could not erase the absolute horror of what had unfolded inside the family home on that fateful Saturday evening. It was supposed to be a normal weekend. According to the grieving woman, relatives had gathered safely inside the house. Some were relaxing and watching television, while others were in the kitchen preparing and dishing up food for the family to share.
Then, an unexpected knock came at the front door. Moments later, sheer chaos erupted, turning a place of comfort into a deadly trap.
“I was coming from the toilet when I heard the first gunshot,” she recalled emotionally, describing how quickly the normal evening evaporated.
She vividly described the terrifying sensory overload of the ambush. "My eyes went wide with shock, and all I heard were people screaming. Plates fell onto the floor, and my [young relative] was crying and screaming."
Terrified and unarmed, she said pure survival instinct immediately took over her body.
“I just ran to the room and hid under the bed.”
Curled up beneath the bed in absolute silence, trying to control her breathing, she listened helplessly as rapid gunfire echoed through the confined spaces of the house.
“I covered my ears with my hands, but I could still hear the shooting,” she said, her voice trembling. “All I could think about was that my phone must not ring or make any sound because I knew if they found me, they would kill me too.”
The woman said the deafening gunfire felt completely endless, stretching seconds into what felt like hours.
“It sounded like a war zone inside the house. It was not something any of us expected. I don’t know why anyone would want to kill my family like this.”
When the deafening shooting finally stopped and the gunmen fled the scene, she had to fight through a blinding wall of shock and terror. In a horrific final trauma, she had to physically step over her loved ones’ bleeding bodies to run outside into the street and scream for help.
“They slaughtered my family, that’s what they did,” she said, summarising the sheer brutality of the attack.
She was later taken into a kind neighbour’s home, where local residents desperately tried to calm her down with cups of tea and warm milk while they waited for emergency services to arrive at the bloody scene.
“I kept asking where my [9-year-old relative] was, and the neighbours told me the ambulance fetched him and took him to hospital because he was badly injured,” she said.
Detectives and forensic teams have combed the Strandveld Street property for clues. Police suspect the motive for the brazen weekend attack was gang-related, a common but deadly scourge in the Wesbank area. A massive manhunt is currently underway as police are still actively searching for the gunmen responsible for the massacre. No arrests have yet been made.
