Police are investigating a case of reckless or negligent driving against Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride after he was involved in a car accident on Thursday.
”We have opened a case,” confirmed investigating officer Inspector Quentin Smith on Friday. ”It is still under investigation and he hasn’t been formally charged yet.”
On Friday afternoon McBride was still slightly concussed and on medication in hospital, said his wife, Nina.
Smith said McBride had not been interviewed yet. ”The relevant statements will be taken and forwarded to the prosecutor, and they will make a decision whether to press charges.”
Earlier, media reports quoted witnesses saying McBride was ”blind drunk” at the time and that metro police handling the matter had assaulted and threatened people.
Statements would be taken from the witnesses, Smith said.
It was uncertain whether McBride’s blood alcohol levels were measured at the scene and Smith did not know if this was done at the hospital.
Metro police officers, travelling the same R511 route as McBride, were the first to arrive on the scene. Statements, sketch plans and photographs would be received from them, Smith said.
Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi told a Friday media briefing that McBride sustained head injuries when he lost control of his car, which overturned at 6.20pm near Centurion.
McBride was travelling from a metro police year-end function to an emergency in Eden Park at the time of the accident.
Nkosi did not confirm questions on whether McBride was drunk and on the reports of police assault and intimidation. He stressed that the incident was under South African Police Service investigation.
”Please don’t ask me to take a view or have an opinion without being informed. If we get a report at the end of the investigation, we will then decide how we will act.”
Nkosi said that according to officers at the function, McBride ”was not in the state that he couldn’t drive”.
He urged people with information to take it to the police investigators.
Commenting on reports that an AK-47 rifle was taken from McBride’s car, Nkosi said the police chief carried a pistol and a large, heavier-calibre weapon.
The bigger one, a LM6, could have been mistaken for an AK-47, which is not a police-issue weapon.
”People who saw an AK might have seen a big weapon. As the chief of police, he does carry firearms which were retrieved … the big one might have looked like an AK-47.”
McBride’s wife, Nina, told the briefing that McBride had called at 7.01pm to say he was badly hurt in a serious car accident and that officers would take him to hospital. He called again at 7.05pm and 7.06pm and repeated the same information, she said.
”It then became clear to me that he was suffering from some type of head trauma as he was repeating the same thing.”
McBride had left for the function at about 4pm after he had been shopping with his family, she said. ”He’s very lucky to be alive.” — Sapa