Six-year-old Leana van Wyk has made a full recovery two months after she was shot in the head.
|||Cape Town - Six-year-old Leana van Wyk has made a full recovery two months after she was shot in the head, and, with the help of her mother, she is now trying to put the traumatic memory of the incident behind her.
Leana, who had been playing in the street with her friends, was shot in the head in gang crossfire in Hanover Park in September.
She and her friend Liam Davids, 7, were playing in John Down Walk, Hanover Park, on September 16 when they were caught in the middle of a clash between two factions of the Mongrels gang. A bullet grazed Liam’s skull, while another hit Leana’s head.
Police arrested two men shortly after the shooting and charged them with attempted murder.
Leana spent about a month in Red Cross Children’s Hospital in a medically-induced coma.
Reports emerged that she was taken to ICU following surgery to stop the bleeding and there were reports of swelling on her brain.
Her mother, Louise van Wyk, said Leana had been struggling with her speech therapy and there were concerns about memory loss. She said Leana was having trouble with her sight and that she was concerned that it could be a problem when she went to school.
“I’m scared that she might walk into things, or that the other children might run her over,” she said.
Leana was on medication for fits, Van Wyk said, and had not had any episodes since taking the medication.
Leana did not spend too much time in ICU, her mother said. She recalled the first time he daughter walked at Red Cross Hospital.
“We laughed together, and then I started taking her to the toilet or for short walks around the hospital,” she said.
When the Cape Argus visited their home on Monday, a smiling Leana scrambled up the stairs towards the journalists, but the young girl’s demeanour changed after a while and she lay in her mother’s lap, hiding her face.
“She doesn’t like it when I talk about what happened to her and the shooting. She’ll say ‘mummy must stop talking about that’,” Van Wyk said.
“To think this is a child that saw her death… she was almost dead.”
natasha.prince@inl.co.za
Cape Argus