This is not a nice story. But it has to be told to bring home the harsh reality of life in the street. A young woman was found ‘slithering around like a snake’ on the corner of McKenzie and Gladstone Streets this morning, across the road from Big Wheel Garage.

Pitifully thin and clutching a carton of glue, she appeared to be having convulsions. Municipal electrician, Andre Vorster, saw the scene while reporting to the electrical workshop across the road and immediately went to investigate.

“At one stage she was nearly in the road. Her eyes were large and wild. This girl was completely out of it. Next to her was an older man – apparently her brother – who was also clutching a carton filled with glue and also obviously high.”

What really shocked Andre was that when he called the police, the radio operator replied that ‘because the person has not committed a crime they cannot respond’. School children and passers-by simply laughed at the scene as the young woman continued to groan and roll around in the gutter.

Andre then called the EMRS who were at first hesitant to assist an intoxicated person. However, in the end paramedics did respond and gave the young woman oxygen. She attempted to fight off their help but she was finally put into the ambulance and taken to hospital for treatment.

“I am just sad that people do not want to get involved. She would have probably died on the pavement if she had just been left there,” he said. As a survivor himself after suffering third-degree burns after a sub-station exploded in Glencoe in December 2014, Andre knows what it feels like to experience pain. The older man was left on the pavement and it was not immediately clear where he and his sister are from.