Annanias Mathe, the Mozambican prisoner who escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max jail on November 18, was shot, wounded and arrested in Tembisa on the East Rand of Gauteng on Monday, police said.
He was also back at the country’s most secure prison.
But only hours after Mathe was arrested and taken back to the Pretoria jail, he was due leave again for an urgent operation.
Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said Mathe’s blood pressure dropped and he would be taken to a hospital for an operation to fix the shattered bone in his leg where he was wounded during his Monday morning arrest.
Balfour declined to say which hospital Mathe would be taken to but said Mathe would be accompanied by heavily armed police and correctional-services guards.
He hoped Mathe could be taken back to C-Max as soon as the operation was over.
Earlier, Balfour and Gauteng police Commissioner Perumal Naidoo waited to see him locked up again when he was brought back to the prison after being treated for the gunshot wounds sustained when he was arrested.
Naidoo said security at C-Max, especially around Mathe, would be increased. ”We know him to be a violent, dangerous criminal. We [are] happy to have him back,” he said.
Mathe was arrested after he stole a car with a tracking device from a house in Craighall Park, national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said.
”The tracking device on the vehicle was activated and the tracking company started to follow the vehicle, assisted by a helicopter,” said De Beer.
An employee of the tracking company, Altech Netstar, chased Mathe, who stabbed him in the face.
The employee then fired shots at Mathe, hitting him in the buttocks and legs.
Altech Netstar’s managing director Andy Baker said the company received a call about a stolen vehicle from a woman who was allegedly tied up by Mathe at her Craighall Park home at 6.20am.
He said the woman told the company that someone had broken into her home, tied her and her daughter up and then fled in her car.
”By 6.48am we located the vehicle and using air and ground recovery teams we managed to corner the suspect,” said Baker.
”We gave chase and apprehended the suspect. There was a struggle and our guy was stabbed in the face, but he managed to shoot the suspect.”
Baker said the employee was taken to hospital in a serious condition.
He could not give further details about the employee or the hospital he was taken to.
”All I can say is that our guy is okay, he is stable. He is obviously in a serious condition, but he is stable.
”We are just very happy to know that we could bring this assailant in,” said Baker.
”The perpetrator has been positively identified by police detectives as Annanias Mathe,” said de Beer.
After Mathe’s escape, reports said it appeared that the ”Houdini” stripped and covered his entire body with petroleum jelly to climb out of a window measuring 20cm by 60cm.
Mathe faces 51 charges, including murder, attempted murder, rape, hijacking and armed robbery, said De Beer.
Police in November said that Mathe had ”the luck of the devil”.
”He must be the devil’s child himself because we get new leads every day but he has not yet been arrested,” said investigating officer Arnold Boonstra.
”He seems to have the luck of the devil.”
Police in Mpumalanga and the North West arrested two men in separate incidents in November, believing they had found Mathe.
A church minister was shot and wounded by North West police who received information that a man resembling Mathe was spotted near a school at Madidi in Klipgat.
Believing that the police were attackers, Reverend Motlotlo Rabotape, from the AME church in Winterveldt, fled. He was wounded in the leg when police fired a warning shot.
Rabotape was taken to hospital and a case of attempted murder was opened.
Mpumalanga police also thought that they had found Mathe after arresting a man for possession of dagga at Komatipoort.
But the man, strongly resembling Mathe, was without a particular identification mark, said national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer.
Mathe was detained at A6 section, which houses hardened criminals regarded as escape risks.
Correctional services spokesperson Manelisi Wolela said in November the investigation into how Mathe escaped and whether he had any help from prison officials had not yet been completed.
”There are no new developments in the case yet. Like the minister [of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour] said, we need to give this process some time to evolve,” said Wolela. — Sapa