What seemed to be all fun for most has seen a 19-year-old girl spend five days in hospital after she was hit by a stray bullet during the Epic Gig mayhem, which ensued on Sunday at Mavuso Trade Centre.
According to one of the local newspapers Swazi Observer, The teen discovered to be doing her Form 4 in one of the local schools around the Manzini region had attended the gig with her friends in hopes of seeing her favorite well-known artists, Kwesta and Mlindo The Vocalist, among others.
Unfortunately, things turned nasty at the Epic Gig as hooligans started engaging in barbaric behaviour. They threw bottles to the stage vandalising property after lights went off on stage due to the pushing and shoving that occurred when Mlindo performed.
This barbaric behaviour forced police to call for the riot squad, which came fully armed with their riot gear, including teargas canisters and rubber bullets ready to deal with the now out of order crowd.
In an attempt to stop this, the police tried to disperse the crowd using rubber bullets and teargas canisters which at that moment had some people sustain injuries from those rubber bullets.
For Ntobeko* it was a different story altogether. She was supposedly hit by a rubber bullet, which has however been written off as it has since emerged that the pupil was unfortunately hit by a live round of ammunition and not the rubber bullet as it has been thought.
This incident has forced her to miss school and spend five days in hospital, as local doctors have been unable to extract the bullet from her body, claiming that it is too close to the heart, hence the pupil had to be transferred to a South African hospital so that she could be attended to by specialists.
Narrating her ordeal yesterday at RFM hospital, Ntobeko said she was just preparing to leave as the mayhem began at Mavuso.
She said she was standing next to one of the halls at Mavuso when she heard a loud bang from a gunshot as police dispersed the rowdy crowd.
Ntobeko said she felt her body suddenly become numb as she fell to the ground. She said at that moment, her friends who were next to her thought she was frightened by the gunshot and they tried to raise her to her feet. To their shock, they saw that she was actually bleeding from the back.
It was soon discovered that she had been shot as there was a bullet wound on her shoulder. Ntobeko said she couldn’t feel her feet and her clothes were soaked in blood. She said she was then transported by her friends to hospital.
She says she has spent the past five days in hospital languishing in pain. Her friends and teachers have paid her a visit at RFM hospital and wished her a speedy recovery.
Ntobeko is expected to leave for South Africa, where she will undergo an operation to have the bullet lodged in her body removed thanks to Phalala Fund which has since come to the teen’s rescue as they will be covering some of her medical fees.