BEWARE FUGITIVES
Rape of woman linked to four escapees still on the run
By Tuesday noon this week, Botswana Prisons Service (BPS) in conjunction with the police were still hard at work trying to locate four Zimbabwean men who escaped from Mahalapye prison on Sunday midnight.
It has been more than three days, and the law officers are still searching. “We have not found them yet but confident that we will recapture them,” Senior Superintendent Oagile Kojane of BPS said on Tuesday.
The men are classified as dangerous, and the public is cautioned to be on the lookout. The men are Abraham Sibanda (26) who has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for offences of rape, house breaking, resisting arrest and entering Botswana through an ungazetted point of entry.
There is also Godfrey Moyo (29) who has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for rape. The last two - Last Ndlovu (27) and Thabani Moyo (36) - are remands for the offences of rape and robbery respectively.
Meanwhile, a 28-year-old woman who resides in Letlhakane was raped and dumped near Francistown on Sunday. According Martin’s Drift police station commander, Moses Morolong, they received a report from a woman claiming to be kidnapped and locked up at an unknown location. She told the police that the last signage she saw was of the village Tumasera.
“We tried to act on the tip off, we searched all over and could not find anything. Later in the day, the woman contacted police in Francistown, telling them that she woke up to a Shashe village road signage,” Morolong explained.
He added that the distressed woman was travelling from Orapa to Sefhare village where she was to drop off her car to its new owner. But she never reached her destination. In Palapye, she saw three men hitch hiking and gave them a lift. After driving for a few kilometres, the men began instructing her where to go, resulting in her diverting from the Sefhare route.
They drove to a secluded place where they found another man waiting for them. The four men then proceeded to rape her. The woman contacted the police to inform them of what was happening but no help came. She woke up later in the day near Francistown, dumped there and without her car. “At this moment we cannot really tell with confidence if the fugitives can be linked to this incident. We are still looking for the men who allegedly kidnapped and abused the 28-year-old woman,” Morolong said.
He cautioned Batswana to exercise vigilance when dealing with strangers.
“Women are the most vulnerable. Giving three unknown men a ride was a dangerous risk she took and we advise the public to be vigilant when offering people rides”, he said.