KNYSNA NEWS - Two of Knysna’s well-known security firms joined forces and exposed a syndicate who was allegedly captained by a Knysna woman.
During a joint operation to clean up the CBD, led by the Knysna SAPS on Saturday morning, January 30, the operations manager of AllSound Security, Johan Kapp and the operations manager of Niqua Security, Gerhard Muller as well as SAPS Warrant-Officer Johann Burmeister managed to arrest a woman of approximately 40 years of age who had allegedly been involved in stealing expensive garden furniture and other gardening tools and selling it to unaware 'shoppers'.
“This is a major breakthrough in exposing a syndicate operating below the radar in Knysna. Well done, to all those who played a role in this success,” said a proud Ashley Boëtius, spokesperson for AllSound Security on Tuesday, February 3.
After the arrest, AllSound Security put pictures of the retrieved stolen items on its Facebook page and several people have since come forward to identify their goods. “These thefts occurred over the past few months and, fortunately for some of the victims, their goods had not yet been sold and they have been able to claim them from the police station,” said Boëtius.
Boëtius said she did not think that anybody would have guessed that the lady in a nice white Mercedes microbus seen parked outside residents’ properties on several occasions was not selling her own unwanted domestic goods from her vehicle, but was in fact fencing items that she had allegedly stolen. “Goodness knows how long this group of criminals would have continued to operate before they slipped up,” she said.
On the night of Friday, January 29, during a joint CBD clean-up operation, Kapp and the rest of the team spotted a well-known criminal in one of the streets and stopped to search the man. Boëtius explained that the alleged criminal was carrying a metal pole with a claw-hook welded onto the end, used to break into houses. When they started questioning him “he was soon singing like a canary”, she said.
She said he told them “tales of numerous thefts from homes, of garden furniture, garden implements, tools etcetera”. “He was quick to identify one of his accomplices as a white lady who did the driving while he and other suspects did the looting and loading into a white Mercedes van which she used from time to time." Information supplied was sufficient to obtain a search warrant and on Saturday morning, the team went to the woman's home in Hunters Home, but she was not home.
“In a strange twist, at around the same time Warrant Officer Burmeister was at the suspect's home, our control room received a call from an alert Upper Town resident reporting a suspicious vehicle parked inside church grounds,” Boëtius said. The officers reported that a white woman and two coloured occupants were in the car. AllSound Security immediately dispatched two vehicles to investigate and on arrival, the lady that Burmeister had been looking for was found sitting smoking in a parked vehicle. “Our officers detained all of them while notifying the SAPS.” Upon searching the vehicle, the officers found drugs, a BB gun, a toolbox (stolen in a recent burglary) and stolen hubcaps. Three suspects were taken into custody, Boëtius said.
Afterwards, the police took the female suspect to her home and found a large number of outdoor furniture items, pot plants and other stolen property that were duly confiscated. Boëtius said more information was being followed up pertaining to certain items that had been stolen, such as a lawnmower from a home in Paradise the previous week.
At the time of going to press, Sergeant Chris Spies, Knysna SAPS media liaison, had not yet commented on the arrests made, because he was attending a course elsewhere.
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