Another Kalafatis shot
Tshireletso Motlogelwa | Friday December 20, 2013 15:46
Costa’s girlfriend who accompanied him during the incident, Marang Podi related that a Landcruiser bearing a ‘BX’ registration number pulled up behind them in the car park at Segoditshane Flats behind Middlestar Shopping Complex.
Marang Pudi, who was in the passenger seat of their Isuzu van when bullets swung past her towards Costa, said they had been driving from Extension 4 to The Village around midnight when Costa advised that they take a detour past Middle Star to check on his friends. She said they pulled into a car park. A few seconds later, a white Land Cruiser came and parked directly behind them, blocking their way out.
“Costa started the car, saying: “Who are these people? After what happened to my brother, I cannot stop for anybody.”
As Costa attempted to manouvre the car out, one man from the passenger side of the cruiser came out and shot at them.
Pudi says the man shot through the passenger window, missing her head by a whisker. Two bullets missed Costa, but one hit him on the collarbone, and now sits lodged between his heart and the spinal cord.
X-rays shown to Mmegi show that the bullet is still lodged inches from Costa’s backbone. Pudi says doctors have told the family that Costa is lucky to be alive since the collarbone largely absorbed the bullet’s velocity.
“Otherwise they say the bullets were going straight to the backbone and the heart, which would have killed him,” says a distraught Pudi. After the two men hit Costa, he reversed and sped out of the complex. The men left in the opposite direction.
Costa and Pudi sought the help of a family who took them to Princess Marina Hospital where Costa was admitted in a critical condition. Pudi says the police visited them the next day. She is surprised that government security officials, whose responsibility should have been to arrest Costa if they had an issue with him, should have shot at him first the way they did. Further, she wondered why the men did not apprehend Costa if he was a suspect in any matter.
Costa’s elder brother, Fotios Kalafatis, says his younger brother had told him that he had been warned that he would be killed before December this year or early January next year. “He said some people had told him that the same guys who had gone after his brother (John) were now coming for him. Even when we got to the hospital, he said to us ‘What did I tell you people? What did I tell you?’” he said.
He said the latest episode has put the family in deep distress.
“It is as if we are being hunted down. But nobody will come to us and tell us what exactly we have done wrong. Why should we be killed just like this?” he wondered.
Critical condition
Costa is said to be in a critical condition. The bullet is reportedly wedged between a major artery in his heart and his spinal cord. This has given doctors a problem.
Fotios says the doctors have said that they are still trying to decide whether to take the risk and operate on him, which could lead to paralysis or even heart complications.
“They are saying that they might have to leave the bullet in there afterall,” he Fotios.
Questions and contradictions
Meanwhile, police spokesperson Christopher Mbulawa has said that it was the police who shot at Kalafatis after he refused to stop. But Mbulawa would not field further questions on the matter. The questions that remain include why police officers would leave the scene of a crime after allegedly committing it. Mmegi sought to know why the police did not apprehend their injured suspect after shooting him. Furthermore, on Thursday afternoon, CID officers arrived at the Kalafatis home and revealed that they were still investigating the matter. and said they had no suspects.
The shooting bears all the hallmarks of the first attack, which took the life of John Kalafatis in 2009 - blocking of victim’s car and contradictions of law enforcement organs.