OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Sunday
POLICE have made a significant breakthrough in their fight against the wave of terror gripping Cape Town by identifying the latest two urban terror attacks in the city as the work of the same group.
The Cape Argus newspaper reported that the same stolen car – a white Citi Golf – was used in the drive-by assassination of Wynberg magistrate Pietie Theron and the car bomb attack outside Obz Cafe in Observatory, Cape Town a day later.
Theron’s killers fled in a white Citi Golf after spraying him with bullets in the driveway of his home in Stella Road, Plumstead on Thursday afternoon.
The same Golf exploded in Lower Main Road, Observatory at 10.15pm on Friday, although the number plates had been changed.
The engine number of the wrecked car corresponded with vehicle registration records of the white Golf used in the Theron slaying. The car had been stolen in Bergvliet a few days earlier.
Police are also hopeful of making further breakthroughs after taking fingerprints from a beer glass that may have been used by a suspect in the Observatory blast, the Argus reported.
A patron in a restaurant claimed to have witnessed “highly suspicious behaviour” by a fellow patron in a nearby restaurant shortly before the blast.
The patron reported to police that a tall, swarthy man with short dark hair entered the establishment at 10.18pm and ordered a beer. The patron said he became suspicious of the man after the explosion.
Amid the pandemonium, shouting and chaos that followed the blast, the man neither moved nor flinched nor showed any signs of shock. He had remained seated, seemingly calm, at his table. To other people in the restaurant, his calmness stood out starkly.
Three minutes later at 10.24, the man stood up, produced R10 to pay for the beer, and left without a word. He had allegedly not even glanced towards the destroyed Golf before heading in the opposite direction.