Charges of reckless or negligent driving are being investigated against an Ekurhuleni metro police official, but police refuse to say whether that official is controversial police chief Robert McBride.
Witnesses have reportedly claimed McBride was ”blind-drunk” when he rolled his car on the R511 near Centurion on Thursday night.
They accused Ekurhuleni metro police officers of assaulting people on the scene and threatening to shoot them. Officials were tight-lipped about the crash on Friday, but confirmed that McBride had been involved in an accident.
Ekurhuleni metro police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Wilfred Kgasago said he was injured, but said he could not describe the nature of his injuries.
Eye-witnesses told the daily newspaper Beeld that they had seen cuts on McBride’s head.
Kgasago described the allegations against McBride and his colleagues as ”crazy”.
He said a report into the matter was being compiled and would be made available later on Friday.
Gauteng police spokesperson Govindsamy Mariemuthoo told the domestic news agency Sapa that the police were investigating a case of reckless of negligent driving against ”an Ekurhuleni metropolitan police official”.
He declined to give more details and refused to name the official.
Beeld reported on Friday that witnesses saw McBride’s car overturn, losing a tyre, when it hit a curb while racing past them on the R511.
They ran to the car to help the driver, to find it was McBride, they told the newspaper. They alleged he was severely under the influence of alcohol.
While McBride apparently claimed there were other people in the car at the time of the crash, the witnesses said he was alone.
A short while later, three Ekurhuleni metro police officers arrived.
They apparently hit a woman when she tried to take photographs of the scene with her cellphone and threatened to shoot another witness when he took the keys to their vehicle and told them not to remove McBride from the scene until the police arrived.
The metro police officers allegedly picked up a quantity of shotgun cartridges which had spilled onto the ground from McBride’s car and removed an AK-47 assault rifle and documents from the boot. – Sapa