Johannesburg - Armed suspects are alleged to have caused “total mayhem” when they gunned down a metro police officer and then shot at two more people as they fled.
By the time everything had calmed down, two people were dead and another badly injured in a minibus taxi. The police officer’s service pistol was also missing.
The incident happened on Friday evening in Kliptown, Soweto. Allegations are that the 36-year-old officer had gone to visit his mother just before he was shot in cold blood outside the gate.
The officer, who has not been named yet, left the house around 10.30pm because his shift was due to start at 11pm. However, as he walked towards his official vehicle parked outside, five armed men allegedly appeared.
The killers shot the officer once in the head, according to the spokeswoman for the Johannesburg Metro Police Department, Edna Mamonyane.
He collapsed on the ground and died. The men then removed his service pistol. As they fled, they saw a woman approach; she had apparently witnessed the officer’s murder.
“They shot her and killed her too,” Mamonyane said, adding that the woman died in the street. Just as they shot the woman, a minibus taxi that was approaching stopped.
Mamonyane said it is not known why the driver stopped and whether it could be because of shock but the armed men shot him as well. He was taken to hospital in critical condition.
Gauteng police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said officers were following several leads.
“There is also a possibility that the motive might have been the robbery of a firearm,” he said.
This latest shooting came two days after the murder of Ekurhuleni Metro Police officer Major Coert Jordaan, who was shot and killed while fishing in Springs. Two men have since been arrested for his murder.
In a separate incident, a foreign journalist is in a critical condition in hospital after being shot during a robbery on Saturday evening.
He was allegedly shot in the head and found lying outside a hired Toyota Quantum in which he was he travelling.
Unconfirmed reports are that he was here to report on the Voice of Angola, a singing competition being filmed in South Africa.
Allegations are that he had just arrived from home and had been picked up by an unknown person from OR Tambo International Airport when men in a BMW attacked them.
The victim was heading to Sandton.
The Star