Francesca Villette and Kgopi Mabotja
THE family of police Warrant Officer Petrus Holz were distraught after he was knifed to death on the N2 Hell Run Wednesday morning.
Five people were taken in for questioning.
Holz was stabbed to death by two people while on his way to his office. He was travelling on the infamous stretch of road between Somerset West and Khayelitsha and was not in uniform at the time of his murder.
Holz’s wife Rene and their children Burger, 22, and Michaela, 14, struggled to speak to the press Wednesday. A few neighbours and family members were at their Somerset West home Wednesday afternoon to offer their condolences, with some bearing flowers.
Burger said his father had loved his job. The young man struggled to compose himself as he tried to speak about the last few minutes of his dad’s life.
“He was on his way to work at 5am,” he said, but broke down before speaking about how passionate his father had been about his work.
Many photographs of Holz and his family adorned their wall. Rene wept as she looked at one of the pictures of her husband.
Holz, 50, joined the police in 1992 and joined the Hawks’ Commercial Crime Unit in Cape Town in 2007. He was on his way to his office in Bellville on Wednesday morning.
Holz had driven over objects placed in the road and punctured a tyre, a tactic used by criminals to force motorists to stop. Criminals then rob and sometimes assault and kill the motorists.
Hawks spokesperson Hangwani Mulaudzi said Holz stopped to inspect his vehicle, and that was when he was attacked.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that he was stabbed with a blunt object and some of his personal items were stolen,” Mulaudzi said.
Acting police commissioner, Major-General Thembisile Patekile, said detectives from Somerset West, Macassar and Khayelitsha would form a team, bringing together all the incidents that had occurred along the Hell Run.
This would crack the case and bring the perpetrators to book. Community Safety MEC Dan Plato yesterday wrote to Transport Minister Dipuo Peters and the SA National Roads Agency Limited in a bid to explore tactics that would help bring an end to crime along the road.
In Gauteng, the Cape Times’ sister paper The Star reported the murder of Simon Mabatamela of the Johannesburg metro police department on Tuesday.
Police also lost one of their Gauteng members in a shoot-out with a gang in Vosloorus .