'Dad, we have been hijacked and they took my baby away'
Durban family shattered after little girl killed during shootout
Image: Jackie Clausen
The image of Sadia Sukhraj – lifeless and bloodied on a hospital gurney – will forever be seared into the mind of her grandfather.
The nine-year-old had been with her father, Shailendra, on a school run on Monday when he was pulled from the car while in the driveway of a Shallcross home in Durban by three men, who then sped off with Sadia.
“The hijackers drove away with the nine-year-old child. The hijacked vehicle was pursued by the child’s father‚ and then there was a shooting‚ so we don’t know exactly how the child got shot and by whom‚” Chatsworth community policing forum chairperson Jakes Singh said.
Grandfather Prem, a 65-year-old pastor, recounting the family tragedy, said he received a chilling call from his son, also a pastor.
“He just said: ‘Dad, we have been hijacked and they took my baby away’,” he said.
He would only realise later that his granddaughter had died from a single gunshot wound in a nearby hospital, her final moments likely a flurry of panic and pain.
“I saw her there and that is an image that will never leave me … I don’t think it will,” Prem Sukhraj said, tears welling in his eyes.
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