Motherwell police arrest one suspect and seize a.22 revolver after Mdundu Street house robbery

A 20-year-old man appears in the Motherwell Magistrate’s Court on Monday, September 21, on charges of house robbery, unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition, after police arrested him at the scene of a robbery in NU7, Motherwell, on Thursday morning.

As IOL reported on September 18, the family was targeted at about 9am at their home in Mdundu Street in the Gqeberha township. One man walked up to the residential gate holding a mobile phone and told the family he had a message for the victim’s daughter. When a family member went to answer, two more men came from the side of the property. One of them, armed with a handgun, forced the family back inside the house.

Inside, the men demanded the family’s cellphones and made them open their banking applications. Police spokesperson Captain Sandra Janse Van Rensburg said the 64-year-old man was assaulted with a firearm and sustained an open wound above his eye. The family was then forced to transfer R2,000 by CashSend before the suspects fled with three cellphones.

The arrest came while the robbers were still in the house

What separates this case from the ordinary run of house robberies is the timing of the police response. SAPS Motherwell members arrived at the property while the suspects were still inside. On seeing the officers, the men ran through the back of the premises and over a boundary wall. Two officers gave chase and caught one of them.

Police recovered a cellphone, a black gas gun and a silver.22 revolver loaded with three live rounds. A gas gun and a live firearm in the same robbery is a detail worth pausing on. A gas gun is a replica-style weapon that fires irritant or blank cartridges and cannot fire a bullet, and it is frequently used in street robberies precisely because it looks like the real thing at a gate. The.22 revolver is a real firearm, and under the Firearms Control Act 60 of 2000 the unlawful possession of it and of its ammunition are separate offences carrying their own sentences, apart from the robbery charge.

CashSend, the mechanism the family was forced to use, is a cellphone-based transfer offered by the major banks that lets a sender move money to a recipient who withdraws it with a voucher code and their own cellphone number, without a bank card. It is quick, it needs no branch visit, and that is exactly why robbers use it. A transfer made under threat can be reported to the bank and to the police, and the transaction record, the time stamp and the withdrawal point are all traceable. Families who are made to move money this way should report it to their bank as a fraudulent or coerced transaction as well as to SAPS, because the two processes run on different systems and the bank’s fraud desk can flag the voucher before it is cashed.

What the case says about policing in Nelson Mandela Bay

House robbery is one of the priority crimes the South African Police Service tracks, and the arrests that follow from it are not evenly spread. What happened in Mdundu Street on Thursday is the version of the story that does not usually get told: officers were dispatched, they arrived before the suspects had left, they chased on foot, they made an arrest and they took a loaded firearm out of circulation. Acting Nelson Mandela Bay district commissioner Brigadier Abdoerahgmaan Humphries commended the officers for the speed of the arrest and the recovery of the weapon, and that commendation is on the record.

The investigation is continuing and police are following up information to trace the other suspects. Two men who fled over that boundary wall are still at large, and the family’s three cellphones have not been recovered. Anyone with information on the remaining suspects can contact SAPS Motherwell or use the SAPS Crime Stop number, 08600 10111.

For residents of Motherwell and the wider Nelson Mandela Bay metro, the practical points are the ones that recur in every case of this kind. A stranger at the gate with a story about a message, a delivery or a lost pet is the standard opening move, and the time to be careful is before the gate is opened, not after. A firearm in the hand of an intruder is a reason to comply and not to resist. And a transfer made under threat should be reported to the bank within hours, not days, because the money can still be stopped while the voucher is uncashed.

Source: IOL, Family allegedly forced to transfer R2,000 during Gqeberha house robbery.