Nine arrested in Chatsworth swoop, and police say they found the murder gun

Nine men were arrested in a sting operation in Chatsworth, Durban, in connection with a double murder, a kidnapping and robbery, and an assault, Durban Metro Police said. All nine are due to appear in the Chatsworth Magistrate’s Court.

As IOL reported on 22 October, the arrests were made by the Durban Metro Police Service Drug Team working with the Chatsworth police tracing team and the Crime Intelligence Unit.

The double murder charge concerns two men, aged 34 and 24, over a shooting on Progress Road in Welbedacht West on 3 October. Colonel Booysie Zungu, spokesperson for the Durban metro police, said the shooting happened at about 2am.

The firearm used in that killing, Zungu said, was found in the possession of a 46-year-old man, who was arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.

A second group of three men, aged 21, 24 and 32, was arrested for kidnapping and robbery. Zungu said they robbed a man of his iPhone 12, a Samsung tablet and a new pair of Adidas sandals. According to the account he gave, one of the suspects owed the victim money, and when the victim went to ask for it, the suspect and two others told him he would get nothing. They then took the phone, the tablet and the sandals.

Three further men were charged with assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in a separate matter. Zungu did not set out the details of that case in the account given.

What the arrests establish is that police have nine people in custody and a set of charges against them. They do not establish guilt. That question belongs to the Chatsworth Magistrate’s Court, where the cases are set to be put for the first time.

The seizure of a firearm is the detail residents of the south Durban basin will notice first. Welbedacht West and Chatsworth sit in a part of the city where gun violence and the tracing of the weapons used in it are a standing concern for the communities living there, and a weapon recovered and a man charged over it is the outcome police tracing work is meant to produce.

For the family of the two people killed on Progress Road in the early hours of 3 October, the arrests are the first step in a process that now moves to court. For the man robbed of his phone, tablet and sandals, the case turns on a debt he went to collect. Both matters now sit on the same court roll.