FRIDAY 12.00NOON:
TWO men believed to be members of the hijacking gang suspected of murdering two couples in Cape Town last week were shot dead at a police roadblock on Thursday. Following the arrest of two suspects in the case, police received information that two further suspects intended fleeing the Western Cape in a bakkie they hijacked in Stellenbosch on Sunday.
After setting up roadblocks around Paarl and Rawsonville police spotted the suspects’ vehicle at 7pm on Thursday and ordered it off the road. When the suspects fired on police they shot back, killing one suspect and fatally wounding the other, who died in Tygerberg hospital on Friday morning.
The two men were the third and fourth suspects apprehended by police in connection with the murders of Johannesburg businesswoman Marilese van der Merwe, 28, and her American friend Edward Keim, 33, and the murders of Somerset West couple Mike and Magdalene Knott, both 54.
A firearm belonging to Mike Knott was recovered by police after the Rawsonville roadblock shootout.
Meanwhile, a fifth suspect taken in for questioning on Thursday was subsequently placed under arrest. Police believe they have accounted for all five members of the car hijacking syndicate. The surviving suspects are expected to appear in the Mitchell’s Plain Magistrate’s Court soon in connection with the murders.
And, in other crime news, police have rearrested two of six dangerous prisoners who escaped from Pretoria Central Prison early in December. Bushie Engelbrecht, head of the police special investigative task unit, said Lassy Sibiya and Killer Nkuna were arrested on Thursday night in Hammanskraal north of Pretoria following a tip-off.