'The idiot shot while looking me in the eye'

''I can't believe a boy who looks like me - probably younger than me - can look me in the eyes and shoot me like I'm an animal. "

Solomon Saohatse is angry.

A hijacker came into his neighbourhood and shot him three times before throwing him out of the car.

But after a month in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, he went home last week.

The 33-year-old property developer from Pimville in Soweto says he was a passenger in his friend's VW Golf 5, waiting for the driver to fetch something from a house. The car was parked three blocks from his home.

''This stranger came up and asked for a match. I told him I didn't have any. Five seconds later, the car door opened and I thought it was my friend, but it was this idiot pointing a gun at me. He shot me while looking me in the eye and I asked him, 'Why are you shooting me?' "

The next shot, like the first, hit his left hip. ''I went for the gun. We struggled and it went off again. I was hit in my left leg."

The gunman's accomplices then appeared and dragged him out of the car. ''They kicked me and searched me, got in the car and left me to die."

By the time his friend returned, the thugs had fled.

He said although the car was found the next day, abandoned in nearby Emdeni, he had been told there had been no arrests yet.