He went for breakfast with his friends, and then he decided to stop at Game in Cresta Shopping Centre because it was pensioner’s day. And then he was shot.
Werner Schlebach (78) was the only casualty in the Cresta shooting on 13 August. Six armed robbers held up staff at the newly opened Apple iStore in the centre. Their escape caused panic and alarm as shots were fired outside the centre.
Schlebach was shot through his car window, and the bullet travelled through both of his arms and then out of the car door.
“The shot that hit me must have come from a security guard,” Schlebach said at his home in Fairlands on 20 August.
“I could see the robbers, and the shot came from a different direction.”
Schlebach remembers every moment of his ordeal in painstaking detail.
“I finished my breakfast around 10.55,” he recounted.
“Then I drove to Cresta. I was hunting for a parking spot in the old resident’s parking, near Entrance 4. As I drove underneath the canopy I saw a bunch of men pushing a train of trolleys. And then suddenly the trolley men ducked. They must have heard something, probably the first shot, but I heard nothing because my car engine was running.”
At this point, Schlebach noticed a white Opel bakkie, specifically because it was parked at the wrong side of the round-about in the parking area. He also noticed a man standing on top of the bakkie holding an AK-47.
“It was like a movie was playing out; nobody was moving and I was observing in slow-motion,” he said.
“Two men came running, one with a gun and a big plastic bag loaded with goodies, and one carrying a revolver. A shot echoed in the parking lot – Ba-bang!” In spite of his injured arms, Schlebach gestures energetically, demonstrating what happened to him in sweeping motions.
“Then the AK-47 shot. It was like lightning – a huge bang, a bright light.”
Five security guards came running toward his direction in a cluster. “I was still strapped in with my seat belt, and I suddenly saw that my car window was opaque. I saw the bullet hole in my window, but I felt nothing, I smelled nothing.”
It was 11.11 exactly, when he was shot. The time on his car’s dashboard is imprinted in his mind, he said.
“I got out of the car. I felt something warm running down my arms. I walked. It was a heavy walk, uphill toward the entrance. I noticed that the trolley train was somehow gone.”
Schlebach collapsed close to Entrance 4.
“I called out, “Help me, I’m bleeding.” I didn’t even know I was bleeding, but somehow I called that out. I called out four or five times. Nobody came. I lay there shivering. Finally there were steps, and a young man’s voice said ‘Are you hurt?’ He made me lie down.”
Other people joined the young man, he said. The doctors from Healthworx in the shopping centre covered him with a space blanket. His clothes were cut off him, and he lay there naked, and after ten minutes an ambulance came.
Schlebach was transported to Joburg General Hospital and treated for two gunshot wounds.
“I’m not on a hating mission,” he said.
“But I think big shopping centres should have Red Cross medical help points. Cresta Shopping Centre don’t want to help me, they said it wasn’t their responsibility.”
His arms are healing, he said, but he is concerned about the movement in his fingers. “I’m a clarinet player, I’m a musician. They warned me that my hands might not be as agile, although luckily, no nerves were injured. It hurt like mad until my arms were pinned.”
Schlebach is German, and when he was 10 years old, he saw World War II up close. The topic of war visibly upsets him. “I saw a lot of destruction,” he said. “”I saw a lot of bombings. I don’t like violence, I don’t like flashing lights. But I’m a Buddhist, and my philosophy is that whatever happens, happens.”
*iStore director Jan van Spaandonk said that the guards at iStore Cresta were unarmed. “It is therefore impossible that the individual was shot by one of our guards,” he said.
“Furthermore, we would not like to speculate in this matter and prefer to wait for the outcome of the forensic investigation by the SAPS.”
“The SAPS are investigating the incident and, together with our security advisers, we’re undertaking our own investigation,” Cresta manager Deborah Nathan said.
