A beer ceremony to thank the ancestors turned sour after a five-year-old girl was run over by a suspected drunk driver.
|||Cape Town - A traditional beer ceremony to thank the ancestors turned sour when a five-year-old girl was knocked over by a suspected drunk driver leaving the function.
Little Anelisiwe Saul died tragically on Sunday afternoon after she fell from the back of the bakkie and the driver reversed over her head.
The five-year-old was playing in the back of the vehicle with her older sister Abongile Saul and two other children outside a relative’s home in Kuyasa, Khayelitsha, when the incident happened.
Relatives say the driver had been part of the umqombothi, or traditional beer ritual, when he left shortly after 5pm.
Anelisiwe’s mother Neliswa Saul, 39, says: “We were all sitting inside the house and he [the driver] got up to leave.
“He was here for the umqombothi and had been drinking alongside everyone else.
“His van was parked outside and the children were busy playing inside it.
“He got in the car, drove around the block and went to his brother’s house down the road.
“And for some reason he reversed over a speed hump and that’s when Anelisiwe fell out.
“He backed up again and hit her on the head as she tried to get out from underneath the van.
“When we got there, she was bleeding all over, the paramedics arrived soon after but she died in their arms,” says the grieving mom.
The mother of three says she is still battling to come to terms with her daughter’s untimely death.
“We don’t even live this side, I brought my children here for the weekend just for the ceremony and for one of them to die like that is hard to believe,” she adds.
“When the police arrested him for drunken driving yesterday [Sunday], I told them I did not want him in jail.
“I want him to come out and bury my child because we do not have the money.”
Police spokesperson Captain FC van Wyk confirms the suspect was arrested and charged with culpable homicide.
Daily Voice