ANOTHER COP SHOT DEAD IN MATSAPHA

MANZINI - Another police officer has been shot dead!

This is a second police officer to be shot dead by unknown gunmen in less than 48 hours. The incident took place at Mathangeni, Matsapha in the Manzini Region yesterday at around 7pm. The other incident took place near Manzini Club traffic circle on Saturday at around 3am, where a female police officer Zinhle Mavuso was shot dead, while her colleague, Philani Mntungwa, was rushed to hospital with serious injuries.

A source close to the matter said the police officer was based under the Traffic Department in Matsapha Police Station, and is said to have left the police station with a colleague to attend to a supposed road traffic accident around Mathangeni. This was after the purported road traffic accident was reported through a phone call to the Matsapha Police Station.

Traffic

According to the source, when the officers reached Mathangeni, they slowed down because there was traffic and they assumed that it was caused by the reported supposed road traffic accident. The source said several gunshots were fired at the car by unknown men. At the time of compiling this report, it was not clear whether the gunmen were in a car or were on foot, since even eyewitnesses ran helter-skelter after hearing the gun shots.

In the process, he said one of the police officers was hit by some of the bullets and died on the spot, while his colleague managed to bolt and raised the alarm to their colleagues at Matsapha Police Station.
The source said some of the police officers who were first to arrive at the scene were of the view that the road traffic accident report was a hoax.
He said the assumption was that the call was supposedly made by the shooters as their plan was to ambush the law enforcers.
In that regard, he said the police said they would now have to find a way of scrutinising reports which they received through phone calls. He said the police said this was because it was believed that even the shooting which took place in Manzini on Saturday was arranged in a similar fashion, a fake report which was reported through a phone call.

Shooting

“Shortly after the shooting incident, the crime scene was occupied by uniformed and plain clothes police officers from Matsapha Police Station, and later on, they were joined by their colleagues from Manzini. They included those from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Serious Crimes Unit (Lukhozi) and Organised Crime Unit (Tingculungculu),” the source said.

Meanwhile, efforts of getting comment from the Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati proved futile as her mobile phone rang unanswered yesterday evening. She was called between 8:41pm and 8:52pm.Thereafter, a questionnaire was sent to her via WhatsApp at 9:20pm, but when this report was compiled later on, she had not responded to it.

However, this publication reliably gathered that government would issue a statement today about the shooting of police officers. Mathangeni is located about 1.3 kilometres from Matsapha Police Station and approximately four kilometres from Matsapha Airport, which has an Air Wing for the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF) where there was an attempted arson attack incident on Saturday night.

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