Wave of bombings hits Graskop and Hazyview
MBOMBELA - A wave of bombings hit the Lowveld over this past long weekend.
On Sunday, two bombings and one business robbery occurred in Graskop within just 45 minutes of one another, leaving one security guard injured and several residents fuming.
They decided enough is enough, took to the streets and went as far as locking the Graskop Police Station up with a lock and chain, demanding the station commander’s resignation. They were elated to report that through unified actions by the various stakeholders in town, they were able to send the station commander packing. “We cannot have businesses 100m away from the police station robbed, and they take no action to prevent these attacks. They also took more than three hours to attend to the crime scene, claiming that they were scared, while we expect them to protect us. We wanted him gone and demand a new commander who will be prepared to fight crime in our town,” one of these citizens said.
A provincial police spokesperson, Brigadier Selvy Mohlala, confirmed that the local SPAR, TOPS and Pep were robbed.
He said an unknown amount of alcohol was stolen from TOPS, as well as an undisclosed amount of money from the two safes.
“Spent rifle and pistol cartridges were recovered at the scenes.”
The suspects apparently first attacked the security guards in one of the shops, whom they severely assaulted, before hijacking a Toyota Urban Cruiser in which they loaded the liquor. The vehicle was later recovered near the Graskop tunnel, where it was found abandoned.
According to Mohlala, it is thought that there were 30 heavily armed robbers. He, however, did not respond to the allegations from business owners that police members said they were too scared to respond to the robberies, nor did he have any comments on why it allegedly took them more than three hours to respond to the crime scene.
Attacks on filling stations in Hazyview have become such a stumbling block for garage owners, that some of them are considering closing down their businesses. Michael Tomlinson, owner of the Sasol garage just outside Hazyview, is one of them.
‘We cannot have businesses 100m away from the police station robbed, and they take no action to prevent these attacks’
A recent robbery on Tuesday brings the total incidents at this filling station in the last 15 months to six. With this week’s attack being the second one this year, Tomlinson said this might just be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Ten heavily armed men in two vehicles, a white Polo and a white Nissan 1400, stormed the filling station, opened fire and instructed the employees to hit the ground. Two of the suspects closed the road to the garage.
“They took a petrol attendant, pointed a gun at him and instructed the cashier to open the door, or he would die. He opened the door for them and the robbers put detonators in the cash safe and blew it open,” Tomlinson said. “They got away with all the long weekend’s cash, as the cash transit vehicle was only scheduled to collect the cash on Tuesday.”
While no cellphones were taken, a staff member had to part with his cash as well.
On Saturday at about 02:00, a cash safe was bombed in Marite. An undisclosed amount of cash was taken. There are unconfirmed reports from a trusted source of another bombing at a filling station in Rocky Drift early on Friday morning. The police, however, said this incident could not be confirmed.