Westedene, Johannesburg, resident Amy Scholtz fears for her life as send-off gun shots at a nearby cemetery escalate.

The mother of two children, aged six and four, found a bullet lodged in a roof gutter of her home on Saturday afternoon. She said they have been hearing a lot of gunfire at the Westpark Cemetery — where some of SA’s prominent citizens are buried — since last year.

“We heard gunfire, as we have often heard in the last year in Westpark,” she said.

“I thought it was a branch on our roof but when I looked on our roof, I couldn’t see a branch anywhere. I assumed it was a tree that had fallen on our roof. I looked all around for the damage and I couldn’t see a branch. I went to my neighbour and got a ladder and looked in our gutters and then I found a bullet which had hit our roof.”

Scholtz said the shootings give her sleepless nights.

“I have two small children and this is not the first time we have heard gunfire at Westpark, so it’s quite unsettling on a Saturday afternoon,” she said.

“We live fairly close to the cemetery. When I found the bullet I  screamed: ‘Look at this, look at this’. I remembered a story of a lady who was shot last week and at the time my children were completely freaking out and saying ‘close the curtains, close the doors’. I was like ‘don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t actually happening’. My children were right. So, today we were all in the house and we all stayed in and nobody could go outside and we heard the gunfire. We were just terrified to see that we are actually within the firing range.”

Scholtz said she suspected that the shootings are a send-off for the deceased.

“I would assume it is respect for the person that has passed but I don’t know,” she said. “Westpark is a very respected cemetery and I would expect that the people who are buried there are respected people. I don’t know what the traditions are. It’s terrifying for us who actually have to live here within the area of the cemetery. At least if we could be warned, that would be great and then we could all hide. That would be amazing. But it doesn’t work that way. We are just sitting here in our houses and we hear firing and we all have to run. It is terrible.”

One of Scholtz’s neighbours Clint Hill had a similar experience.

“At 14:50 we heard shots fired from the cemetery,” said Hill.

“So I came inside and the next minute I heard a loud crack on the roof and a grinding sound that sounds like a top spinning. I went to look and found a bullet that came down from [a] funeral. We contacted SAPS, they sent people to the cemetery and came to collect the evidence to hopefully get some ballistics [tests].”

Hill said the shootings have become frequent.

“What went through my mind is that why do we have to live in fear of being injured or worse [by] law breaking idiots and why don't the police stop them, the [metro police] and SAPS are always at the cemetery...This is becoming a regular thing which is just plain stupid.”

Sophiatown police station commander Brig Alfred Ndebele said: “Police are still doing investigation, projectile was found.”

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