Outgunned in East Cape rural town.

**Roy Sparks** · 19-06-2011, 21:11

Though I dont have conclusive facts on the whole incident I can retell briefly what I was told by a detective at the scene.

Four armed men broke into a bank in Elliot EC with the bank manager whom they had taken from his home to open the vault. In the insuing saga he managed to trigger an alarm alerting the local police. They had the suspects under seige within the bank for over an hour. It was reported that some of the police fled the scene under superior fire power. The robbers then being in control of the situation , armed with up to two R4 / R5 assault rifles each left the bank still dominating the firefight , walking two blocks up the main street of the small town till they got to a getaway vehicle and fled the scene. They left apparently two pedestrians fatally wounded on the street. This happened shortly after the bank closed on a Saturday afternoon at around midday.Boxed in for an hour and they made a clean getaway. What does this tell us of our SAP.

Undertrained , understaffed , outgunned or just plain SLEG !!

**FrankH** · 19-06-2011, 21:24

Shocking !

**curious george** · 19-06-2011, 22:25

No words that belong on a public forum!

---------- Post added at 22:25 ---------- Previous post was at 21:39 ----------

Oh ps:I note that these guys all used civilian-style firearms!*sarcasm off*

**farmer-el** · 20-06-2011, 01:27

I've been following this with interest. The gang escaped from the Mthatha prison in March after shooting a warder. The leader has escaped from custody about 5 times. A 70 year old bystander was killed during the above mentioned robbery. Thwy had been arrested for a string of armed robberies. After the breakout there were about five major crimes in the area linked to them including a woman killed in Port Saint Johns. Probarly the worst in all of this is that the town business forum apparently had given police info about the impending robbery before it happened and claimed police did nothing about it. As for civillian guns - the local paper said "R4's and R5's". These were stolen from a police station after there escape. Some of the group have since been arrested.

**MyLani** · 20-06-2011, 11:56

Ja, that was Sakkie.
He's the Eastern Capes Most Wanted Criminal. They've broken out of prison 3 or 4 times.
Murdered many people, and ALWAYS shoot first before asking questions.
The gang always has R5's which they get from Armed Robberies at Rural Police Stations.
He was arrested in JHB recently, but will escape soon.
The only way you will stop that gang in with a few well placed bullets