Blood spattered dockets lay strewn around the detective’s offices at the Kagiso police station in Krugersdorp after four policemen were shot dead by a senior police officer on Monday night.
The police officer — who went on a rampage killing eight people — was shot dead by police in Sebokeng in the early hours of Tuesday morning after an extensive manhunt.
Three of the officers were shot in an office — two in the head and one in the chest — and another officer’s body was found lying outside the office with a bullet wound to the chest.
The three were found lying under a table scattered with dockets, with three bullet holes marking the wall behind the table.
”We will just have to rewrite these dockets,” remarked one officer.
Police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said the gunman shot and killed three captains and a senior superintendent at around 7pm.
She said the man had shot and killed three women and a one-year-old baby in Tarlton about half an hour before he made his way to the police station. Another women was wounded and taken to hospital.
She told South African Broadasting Coroporation the man had fled the scene in a police car which he later abandoned. He made his way to Sebokeng where he allegedly shot his brother. The man has been admitted to hospital in a critical condition.
Police then managed to track him down and shoot him.
At the station, police officers and bystanders held their heads in despair, refusing to speak when a South African Press Associatiom (Sapa) reporter approached them for comment.
”It’s tragic, we were like a family, we supported each other,” a woman police officer, who asked not to be named, told Sapa.
Another policeman said: ”This is Satanism. We only see this in the movies.”
Sobbing relatives of some of the victims sat hunched with their heads between their legs in the charge office, while others slept on wooden benches.
Martins-Engelbrecht said the motive for the shooting was not known, and it was also not clear how the murdered women and child were related to the police officer. – Sapa