Police shoot dead AK-47 suspect wanted over Mqanduli tavern murder of an officer

A man wanted over a string of violent crimes, among them the murder of a police officer, was shot dead by police near Mqanduli in the Eastern Cape on Saturday afternoon. Officers recovered an AK-47 assault rifle with its serial number filed off.

The South African Police Service said the man was killed during an intelligence-driven operation by its Tactical Response Team on 17 October. Sunday World reported the shooting on 18 October.

According to the police account, officers acting on information about a murder suspect traced him to Mbulawa Location near Mqanduli. He was driving a white Toyota single-cab bakkie. When police tried to stop him, the statement says, he sped away and a chase began along the R411 towards Coffee Bay.

The pursuit ended back in Mbulawa when the vehicle slowed. As TRT members moved in, police say, the man pointed a firearm at them. “Fearing for their lives, members responded,” the police statement reads. He sustained fatal gunshot wounds and was declared dead at the scene. No officers were injured.

A search of the scene produced the AK-47, an unlicensed weapon with its number ground away, the kind of firearm that cannot be traced back to a licensed owner or a point of sale. Police seized it for investigation and impounded the bakkie.

Preliminary investigations have linked the dead man to several violent crimes in the area. Police say he was a suspect in a murder case in Thafalehashe and a person of interest in the killing of an officer at Eziko Tavern in Mqanduli. That officer’s murder is being investigated by the Hawks, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation.

As is required when someone dies during a police operation, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate has been notified and will investigate the circumstances of the shooting. IPID’s findings will establish whether the use of force was justified. Until then the police account of what happened on the R411 stands as the police account, and the investigation into the recovered firearm and the dead man’s possible link to other violent crimes continues.

For residents around Mqanduli and Coffee Bay, the shooting closes one chapter of a case that began with an officer killed at a tavern, and opens another that will be answered by IPID rather than by the police who pulled the trigger. The Hawks investigation into the officer’s murder remains open, and the AK-47 now sits in a forensic chain that may connect it to other crimes in the district.