A Blue Downs police detective has been announced as a finalist in the National Police Awards taking place on Friday 27 January in Sun City.
Colonel Eddie Clark is the commander of the Blue downs Investigation Unit, which was established during June 2015 to fight gang-related crimes in the cluster.
According to the awards document, Clark is one of three finalists for the Detective of the Year award for his work on the Valencia Farmer case in Eerste River. The 14-year-old girl was gang raped, stabbed 52 times and left for dead at an abandoned house in 1999. She managed to crawl out of house and residents rushed her to Tygerberg Hospital.
Clark visited Farmer in hospital and in a short interview she named her attackers. Clark investigated the matter and the information gathered led to the arrest of six suspects. The court later acquitted three suspects due to a lack of evidence. Two perpetrators were each sentenced to life imprisonment and another to 23 years imprisonment.
One of the suspects had managed to evade justice despite the evidence against him. Clark was determined to leave no stone unturned and after 16 years, he managed to obtain new information which led to the arrest of the suspect in September 2015.
Speaking to the TygerBurger on this morning, Clark was upbeat about the awards saying the nomination came as a complete shock.
“I am on my way to Sun City right now and I was in complete shock about the nomination. I was very, very surprised and I am very excited. I hope I win,” he says.
