Two people were killed in a mass shooting in Montrose Park, which is also known as The Farm, in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Lentegeur Community Police Forum chair, Michael Jacobs, said the shooting appears to be gang-related.
At least one of the men who were killed is a known gangster, Jacobs said. Messages on crimewatch groups called the man “the main problem in the area”.
The groups also said that three other people were killed in the shooting but it is not known how many of them were gangsters.
“As the Lentegeur CPF we strongly condemn the shooting incident and we cannot allow the community of Montrose Park to be held hostage through targeted shootings, intimidation and acts of arson,” Jacobs said. “We call on the police and other law enforcement agencies to quickly apprehend the suspects and bring stability to our area. We further call on our community to provide relevant information to the case by contacting the station commander of Lentegeur police.”
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Jacobs said the arson he was referring to was other incidents reported on crime groups this weekend. In the first incident a man in his thirties died in a house fire in Terence Macaw Street, Woodlands on Saturday night. Then on Sunday morning, Lentegeur police retrieved a burnt out body from a field near the police station.
“After the shooting in The Farm, there was also an arson attack in the area,” Jacobs said, adding that the attack “looked like a petrol bomb”.
Ten arrested
Also, on Sunday, a tip-off led police to retrieving a hijacked van. Police located the van which had been hijacked in Athlone, in Woodlands. Lentegeur police spokesperson Capt Navon van Houten said police acted on a tip off on 2 November and investigated a group of known gangsters who were gathering in Watt Court, Woodlands.
The police ran a search on the vehicle they were driving, a red Volkswagen Van, and found it was linked to a case registered at Athlone Police Station.
The officers searched the van and found three guns and more than sixty rounds of live ammunition.
Police arrested 10 men, aged between 20 and 36. They are due to appear at Mitchell’s Plain Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 4 November.
Teens caught with guns
Meanwhile, last week anti-gang unit (AGU) officers arrested two teenagers for weapons possession.
Const Ndakhe Gwala from the Western Cape’s provincial media office, said the AGU was acting on information about a concealed firearm on Wednesday 29 October. They raided a residence in Cricket Street, Beacon Valley.
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They recovered a .38 Special revolver and one round of ammunition and arrested a 17-year-old boy.
In a separate incident in the same area, officers searched a house in Atletiek Street where they discovered a 16-year-old boy in possession of another .38 Special revolver, with no serial number.
Both teenagers face charges of illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
In a separate incident, also on Wednesday, Mitchell’s Plain police arrested two men, aged 20 and 22, for possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition.
The men were apprehended during a routine stop-and-search operation. They were in possession of a 9mm pistol loaded with 15 rounds of ammunition, Const Gwala said.
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