Man claims police shot him

Mpho Mokwape | Tuesday January 13, 2015 16:04

 

Tshepiso Kolagano, a 28-year old father of two told Mmegi in an interview that the police who were in an SSG armoured vehicle shot him with rubber bullets and left him for dead.

“I was walking from my house – which is a stones throw away from my mother’s, where my children were to spend the new year with them. The police just opened fire on me, without asking any questions. I realised I was on the ground and sensed more than saw the police who came around me, but immediately left me lying there,” he said.

Neighbours who witnessed the shooting came to his rescue.

“The following day, as I was hospitalised at Thamaga Primary Hospital, two police officers checked on me and took my names and that was the last time I saw them. I was discharged on the second day of New Year,” he said.

Two days later he went to the police station where the Station Commander met him.

“I met the Station Commander, who told me he was on his way out but he assigned me to a certain Constable Serumola who took my statements and contact details. That was the last time I heard from them despite their promise to keep in touch,” he said.

Kolagano pointed out that he went to the station several times and was told by other police officers that the Station Commander was unavailable. However in an interview with Station Commander Superintendent Moses Makgoeng said Kolagano’s story was all hogwash.

“Even the injuries he is talking about are not consistent with rubber bullet wounds. He is simply trying to create a case out of nothing for his own selfish reasons,” he said.

He said the police officers who Kolagano claimed visited him in hospital, were on a different mission at the hospital when they learnt there was someone who claimed he had been shot by the police.

“He provided us with several contact numbers, but the phones are either off or he will not answer the phone. We even assumed he had gone back to Lerala as he had said in his statement that he was working and staying in Lerala,” he said.

Meanwhile Kolagano has said he is considering suing the police.