One of South Africa’s most wanted gangsters was arrested on Monday after a botched cash-in-transit heist in the East Rand’s Tsakane township, police said.
Christian ”Seuntjie” van Wyk was one of eight people caught at a house in Palm Ridge in connection with the robbery, police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said on Tuesday.
Van Wyk (36) is suspected to have been involved in a string of cash-in-transit heists in the country, she said. He was linked to another heist in the North West on June 24 this year, and North West detectives had been on Van Wyk’s trail since that heist, in which four people were arrested.
The four are expected to appear in the Ga-Rankuwa Magistrate’s Court on September 27.
De Beer said Van Wyk’s arrest on Monday came after North West police tipped off their East Rand counterparts about Van Wyk’s link to a heist in Tsakane earlier on Monday.
Gauteng police swooped on a house in Palm Ridge just hours after a money van was robbed in Tsakane. They arrested eight suspected cash-in-transit robbers in the house, one of the arrested people being Van Wyk.
The police also seized two AK-47 assault rifles, three R5 rifles and a 9mm pistol at the house, said Superintendent Eugene Opperman on Monday. All the stolen money was recovered and six cars were seized — some at the house and some on the scene of the robbery, he said.
It is suspected the gang is linked to other robberies and robbers.
Opperman said a gang of about 15 heavily armed robbers rammed into a Coin Security vehicle — manned by two guards — and robbed it in Sonnestraal Road, Tsakane, at 1pm on Monday. Police were there within minutes and a shoot-out ensued, but the robbers fled in several vehicles, he said. No one was wounded.
East and North Rand police and the South African Police Service air wing descended on the area and, in a combined, coordinated effort with Coin Security, traced the robbers to a house in Withaak Street, Palm Ridge.
The eight were arrested at the house and in the immediate vicinity, he said. — Sapa