LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Secunda | Tuesday 11.30AM
TWO Coin Security guards were rushed to hospital on Tuesday morning after they where wounded while fighting off 12 heavily armed robbers in the third unsuccessful attempted cash-in-transit heist in Mpumalanga over the past two months.
The attackers, armed with AK47s and R5 assault rifles, were unable to breach the guards’ armoured van, containing R3,5-million in Sasol wages, when they ambushed it on the Kriel-Kinross road near Secunda at about 2h30am.
Gerrie van Wyk (25) is reported to be stable in a Pretoria hospital after being shot in the right side of his chest, while fellow guard, Johan de Beer (24), is reportedly recovering well in the Samuel Bernice Hospital in Delmas after being shot in the upper right arm.
Johnnie van Dyk (51), one of the guards, said shortly after the shooting that the convoy of two armoured vans and a third undercover vehicle with seven guards between them were ambushed by 12 men in two bakkies just after 2h30am without any prior warning near the Sasol plant at Secunda.
Regional police spokesman Inspector Sibongile Nkosi said on Tuesday that both the gang’s vehicles were later found abandoned near Kriel and the surrounding township of Embalenhle. “We believe that at least one or two of the robbers was injured during the gunfight because we discovered quite a bit of blood in one of the getaway cars,” Nkosi said. Police sniffer dogs and a helicopter are still searching the area around the abandoned vehicles. — African Eye News Service