A one-year-old baby girl was killed and seven people were wounded in a shoot-out during a cash-in-transit heist in the Johannesburg city centre on Tuesday, police said.
Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht, speaking from the scene, said two coin security guards had just collected money from a Charlie Parkers store on the corner of Bree and Wanderers streets at about noon when they were approached by between six and eight men.
The gunmen took the cash box and a shoot-out with the guards ensued.
The eight victims were all bystanders. Three of them are in a critical condition.
According to one of the witnesses, three of the gunmen escaped in a white bakkie and the others fled on foot.
Police were investigating and forensic experts and police photographers where also at the scene.
The intersection had been cordoned off from hundreds of curious onlookers. Others looked on from the windows of nearby buildings.
The body of the baby girl lay covered in the middle of Bree Street. Two cash vans were also still in the middle of the road.
Netcare 911 spokesperson Nick Dollman said the situation had drawn a huge crowd. The wounded were transported to Helen Joseph and Johannesburg hospitals.
A 36-year-old woman was in a critical condition as she underwent surgery at the Johannesburg Hospital after the shoot-out.
Hospital spokesperson Lungi Mvumvu said the woman was shot in the stomach and is currently in theatre.
”She is not in a satisfactory condition at all,” she said.
Another woman who was shot in the buttocks during the shoot-out was in a stable condition at the hospital.
Four other patients who were rushed to the Helen Joseph Hospital with gunshot wounds following the incident are all in a stable condition, said spokesperson Zukisa Pumane.
No arrests had been made. — Sapa