Johannesburg – Patrolling Ekurhuleni metro police officers allegedly caught two men busy stripping a car that had been reported as hijacked.
The officers made the discovery on Tuesday and later arrested the two men found at the scene.
According to Ekurhuleni metro police’s spokesperson Kobeli Mokheseng, their officers specialised task team and SWAT/intervention unit teams were busy patrolling in Esselen Park, Tembisa when someone approached them about loud noise of hammers and grinders coming from a nearby house.
The officers went to the house and there, Mokheseng said, found two men aged 34 and 41 stripping a dashboard of the charcoal VW Polo hatchback parked in the yard.
“One of them was armed with a 9mm CZ pistol without ammunition and with serial numbers filled off.
The VW’s doors were tested and officers learnt that it was recently hijacked from the owner in the Tembisa area.
The pair faces charges of the possession of robbed or hijacked motor vehicle’ as well as the possession of an unlicensed firearm.
“They were arrested and detained at the Tembisa police station,” he said.
Later that night other officers who were patrolling other parts of Tembisa came across an abandoned “suspicious” silver KIA Sorento SUV parked on the pavement in Exubeni section, Mokheseng said.
He said tests were also done on the vehicle and they revealed that it was recently hijacked from the owner in Jeppe.
Both the VW Polo and the SUV were impounded.
IOL