It’s a remarkably balmy afternoon on 12 August, precisely 10 days after toddler Luke Tibbetts was shot.
Outside the neat home that the Tibbetts family call their own, kids are tossing balls into the parking lot, women are idly gossiping on stoeps and a breeze is ruffling the large marquee tent outside.
“It was an afternoon like this before our little cousin Luke ended up in hospital,” Monique Hartley, first cousin to the Tibbetts says outside.
“We still saw him late that day.”
Inside the family home bereaved grandma Bernie Tibbetts is cautiously kind to strangers traipsing into her family’s domain. “We are so emotional,” she says.
“Our family is heartbroken. We just don’t know what to do, so we’re just trying to stay together and prepare for the memorials and his funeral on Saturday.”
On 8 August, three-year old Luke died in the Netcare Garden City Hospital after being shot in a shoot-out on Steytler Street in Westbury. Luke was on life support in the hospital with brain damage for a week before dying.
“Grandma took him to the park that afternoon,” Tasneem Damons, another cousin of the Tibbetts recounts.
“Luke had a lot of fun running around. And then Uncle took him to the ice-cream shop on the corner. They came back here with ice-cream, and Luke was yelling, “Bye-bye Uncle!” ”
“That was the last time we heard him saying goodbye,” Hartley says.
The family say they all heard about the shooting immediately after the incident happened.
“We were so shocked, and so sad.”
Both suspects in the murder case appeared in the Sophiatown Magistrates’ Court on the same day.
“I hope the man who shot Luke stays in jail forever,” Damons says.
“I have never lost a child, but I can see what it’s doing to my auntie and my family. He deserves to rot.”
