Cape Town – A teenager has been arrested for the murder of Chimicka Cornberg who was shot during a sleepover at her friend’s house in Ocean View outside Cape Town, police say.

Spokesperson Sergeant Noloyiso Rwexana said on Thursday the boy, 17, would appear in the Simonstown Magistrate’s Court on Friday in connection with the death of the 18-year-old who had been sleeping on the bottom bed of a bunk bed.

She was shot through a window in Carnation Street on Sunday morning and died.

Her family has been left reeling at the events that unfolded on Sunday.

Another house

”She couldn’t hurt a fly, even if she tried,” wept Jasmine Abrahams, Chimicka’s aunt when News24 visited her.

Limping into her house in the suburb situated near Simonstown, she handed the toddler who had climbed on her lap to one of the children running in and out of the house during the school holidays.

”She was really such a nice, nice girl,” said Abrahams.

Chimicka had been living with them at the time of her death, with her mother Lee in another house a short distance away. 

Her mother was out when News24 visited but a few men stood around outside, one sweeping the verge, while neighbours hung over the next door gate. There was no delegation of government ministers or politicians dropping in to offer condolences.

Loved music

”Chimicka was like a mother in this house,” continued Abrahams.

”She was a very quiet person. She was never into drugs. She took a small drink every now and then, but she did not drink a lot,” she recalled.

”If she saw somebody had a boyfriend who was in a gang she would try and get them away and out of that”.

Chimicka lived for her friends and loved music and dancing and looking after the house, her aunt continued.

She would do the laundry, cook the food and make sure the children had bread to take to school.

She points to her foot and explains that she has an abscess that needs continuous draining with the help of the machine perched on the dining room table that takes up most of the small lounge.

Chimicka was always on hand to help her.

”’Come auntie, here is your bathwater’,” she would say to me. I don’t know what I am going to do without her”.

Wooden hut

After the death of her grandmother, with whom she shared a close relationship, Chimicka dropped out of school in Grade 8 and helped at home.

She and her best friend Georgia often had sleepovers, so when she asked her aunt Jasmine to go for a sleepover on Friday night, she was given the green light.

”I told her, ‘It’s okay Micka, you can go”.

At the house where she was shot, two young women stood outside and pointed to where she was shot.

It was inside a tiny dilapidated structure behind a wooden hut. A broken car bumper lies next to the path leading to the front door.

Ocean View was established in 1968 during apartheid to accommodate coloured people forcibly removed from Simonstown, Noordhoek and Fish Hoek because the government wanted to reserve those prime spots for white people.

No enemies

Cut off from the main scenic route, the area has experienced some gang shootings.

More details of the shooting that killed her could emerge during Friday’s court appearance.

According to Abrahams, Georgia’s boyfriend had also slept over and in the morning had asked if Chimicka was awake. Georgia went to check on her and found that she had been shot.

”Nobody knows a thing,” said Abrahams. ”I think it’s the not knowing as to what happened that is eating us up inside. She didn’t have any enemies”.