Robbers collect heavy sentences
2005-04-14
TWO robbers were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for their role in a daring robbery and shoot-out in Paarl three years ago.
A security van with money collected from businesses in Paarl that Monday morning, were ambushed at a garage in Huguenot in July 2002.
Their plans went awry when detectives Gerrit Boois and Jerome Steenkamp noticed “something suspect” while passing on Jan van Riebeeck Drive.
They raised the alarm and roads were immediately sealed off. A Nyanga taxi was forced to stop on the N1 at Simonsvlei.
Six suspects were arrested after a shoot-out between police and the suspects, in which one of the alleged robbers was wounded in the leg.
An accomplice was taken into custody when he hightailed it over smallholdings towards the Old Paarl Road.
A hunting rifle, shotgun, two pistols, cellular telephones and four unopened money trunks were discovered in the taxi.
While the arrests were being made in Paarl South, three robbers who had managed to evade the police, hijacked a farmer in Agter Paarl.
They transferred five money trunks to the back of the Isuzu and drove off with a robber riding shotgun with an AK 47 assault rifle.
The farmer feared for his life as he sat wedged between two robbers in the bakkie. He was set free in an informal settlement near the Cape Town airport, to find his own way home.
The Isuzu, stripped of its wheels, was later discovered in Nyanga.
The accused - all between 28 and 35 years old and unemployed - have been in Allandale Prison since their arrest.
Two of the men pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in the Paarl Regional Court last week.
The trial against the others - who pleaded not guilty on the charges of armed robbery and the illegal possession of weapons and ammunition - continues.
Insp Randy Wessels of the Organised Crime Unit was the investigating officer. Magistrate Dudley Nel was on the bench, with Anita Potgieter prosecuting.
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