Detetctives are hunting for two gunmen who shot and killed an on-duty police constable in Cape Town.
|||Detetctives are hunting for two gunmen who shot and killed an on-duty police constable in Philippi East on Friday evening.
Western Cape police said the 36-year-old constable Xoliswa Banga, who was a single mother, was dressed in full uniform and driving a police car when her attackers fired two shots at her through the windscreen.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut said an unarmed Banga came under attack at about 6.40pm on Friday in an area called “the islands” in Philippi East, as she was returning to the police station.
She was rushed to hospital, but later died of her injuries.
Traut said the suspects fled the scene and that the motive for the attack was still unknown.
“An attack on a member of SAPS is an attack on the entire service, and we will go to the extreme to deliver those responsible,” he said.
On Saturday residents in the area where Banga was attacked said she had been reversing the police vehicle after picking up the keys for the police station’s trauma room from the home of a woman there.
“We heard two shots and ran outside. The van was reversing slowly and the two guys were standing in front. They moved to the driver’s side and demanded her firearm, before firing another shot,” one said.
He added that a fourth shot, aimed at a resident who froze after witnessing the ordeal, missed and lodged in the wall of a nearby home.
On Saturday the mood at the Philippi East police station was sombre, as Banga’s colleagues struggled to come to terms with her death.
Grief-stricken family members and friends also gathered at her Macassar home, where it emerged that Banga’s mother, who lives in the Eastern Cape, had to be hospitalised when she heard the news of her daughter’s death.
Relative Thumeka Moni said they could not believe Banga was dead.
“We heard late last night when her brother called us. Xoliswa and her daughter Sesethu stayed alone here at the house in Macassar.
“Her daughter is traumatised. She cries all the time,” Moni said.
Western Cape police commissioner Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer urged community members to come forward with any information that could help the investigation.
“The murder of a police officer does not just affect the police, but also the community in which she works,” he said. “It is an outrage.”
Hanif Loonat, chairman of the Western Cape Community Policing Board, visited the family home yesterday and
said it was a tragedy that a police officer, who left her loved ones daily to ensure others could live in a safe society, had lost her life.
warda.meyer@inl.co.za - Weekend Argus