ON Sunday, at about 5.15pm, two armed robbery suspects were shot and killed and a third wounded following a shoot-out with police in Pretoria.
The shoot-out occurred after the men had a followed a woman from OR Tambo International Airport to her Pretoria home.
According to Brig Vishnu Naidoo from the SAPS, incidents of this nature, where victims are followed from the airport and robbed at their destinations, have started to become a growing challenge for police.
“This incident is indicative of the tireless work that our police officers have been doing to curb this problem,” said Naidoo.
In a joint intelligence driven operation, comprising members from National Crime Intelligence, the National Investigation Unit (NINU), Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (Hawks), Gauteng K9 and Tracker, the team responded to intelligence of an armed robbery that was to be committed in the Pretoria Moot area involving a blue BMW.
The team split up into different groups and began patrolling the area.
“One of the groups spotted the BMW fitting the description outside the victim’s house where the robbery was already taking place. The entire team was summoned and when they tried to arrest the suspects, the shoot-out ensued. Two male suspects were shot and killed and the third was wounded and taken to hospital. Police recovered a .38 special revolver and a pistol which were used by the robbers,” Naidoo explained.
None of the police officers were injured.
The suspects will be profiled and the recovered weapons will be sent for ballistic testing to determine if they were involved in and used in other crimes respectively.
Naidoo further added that it was later established that the 43-year-old woman of Haaroff Street picked up her two Angolan visitors from OR Tambo Airport and returned home with them.
As she drove into the driveway, the men confronted them and demanded jewellery and their bags.
“We are hopeful that other such potential robbers would be mindful of both our intelligence capacity and reaction team and refrain from such criminality,” Naidoo added.
It also later emerged that the BMW used by the robbers was taken in an armed robbery earlier this month in the Boschkop area.
