Mystery of woman shot in the head
Why was she a passenger in the police van?
THE death of two policemen, shot dead in an ambush in Bloekombos near Kraaifontein, on February 28, took a bizarre turn when it was revealed that a woman passenger in their police van was also seriously wounded in the incident, a fact kept hidden when police released their initial statement about the incident.
The facts came to light when a charge of attempted murder was added to the two charges of murder against Mxoleleni Sikhala, 32, who was arrested soon after the incident.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said a woman was shot in the head while sitting in the police van.
Ntabazalila said the woman was recuperating in hospital.
Sikhala appeared in the Blue Downs Magistrate’s Court charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances (two firearms, 45 rounds of 9mm ammunition and a cellphone), on Tuesday. His case was postponed to next Tuesday.
Neither Ntabazalila nor Hawks spokesperson Katlego Mogale could shed light on who the woman was, what she was doing in the police van at about 1.45am, and why and how the police and the Hawks missed that a woman was in the van, because according to them only the two officers, Mnakwazi Mdoko, 46, and Mninawa Breakfast, 28, were killed while on patrol in Bloekombos that Sunday.
Police Minister Bheki Cele’s spokesperson, Lirandzu Themba, said Cele was aware that a woman had been wounded.
Dr Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Crime and Justice Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, said police standing orders have always closely prescribed who may or may not travel in a police vehicle.
Burger said there may be two reasons the woman was in the police van. One was that she may have been a complainant who did not have any other transport.
He said the officers would have been justified in having the woman sit with them in the front of the vehicle if she was a complainant, or perhaps a witness to some criminal offence, and no other transport was available for her. He said the other possibility was that the officers had reasons for having her with them that had nothing to do with police work.
“Maybe it was simply a social reason, and now the police would want to avoid embarrassment of having to admit that the female was in the vehicle with the police officers,” he said.
Burger said another reason that the police would not disclose the presence of the woman could be that she might have provided a link to a police investigation that the police would not at this time want to disclose, because it could jeopardise the investigation.