Home Invasion Cases Worry Mochudi Police
Pini Bothoko | Monday October 23, 2017 14:52
In an interview with The Monitor, Mochudi police station commander superintendent Simon Sitale said home invasions cases are on the rise in his policing area and needs immediate attention.
Sitale said that even though he did not have statistics of the cases, criminals were having a field day, breaking into a property every week, hence turning Mochudi into a home invasion hotspot.
He stated that usually the criminals break into people’s dwellings at night and attack the owners in their sleep and then take their valuables. He said that they target cash, mobile phones, laptops and more.
“Usually, it is hard for victims to identify the criminals because they attack them at night when it’s dark, something which makes our efforts to curb the situation a bit difficult because we do not know the culprits’ identities,” Sitale said.
He said that even though they do not know if these criminals are the ones who have been terrorising home, they also have the habit of attacking the business community, especially retailers like shops and filling stations.
Sitale said that the business community they usually attack and rob them at gunpoint and walked untraced with large sum of money.
He said that a sexagenarian working as a school head in one of the local primary school is currently fighting for her life at Deborah Memorial Hospital after she was assaulted during a home invasion incident recently.
He said that they are currently investigating a case in which on October 8th three violent home intruders stormed and brutally bashed a 60-year-old woman in a terrifying attack at her dwelling at Raserora ward in Mochudi before stealing her car, two mobile phones and cash.
“The three intruders with two still at large attacked the victim in her sleep instructed her to give them cash amounting to P300, mobile phones and other valuables and drove away with her Toyota Hilux vehicle. Few days after the incident we found the victim’s car abandoned at Block 10 in Gaborone. We suspect that they only wanted to use it as a run away car because they did not steal anything from it,” Setlale said.
He said intruders assaulted the victim who is still hospitalised due to the injuries she sustained.
“Last week, we managed to arrest the 24 year-old man over this incident and he’s currently in custody helping the police with investigations. The other two suspects are still on the run and investigations on the matter are still ongoing to arrest them,” Sitale said.
Sitale called on members of the community to strengthen their neighborhood watch to partner and help each other fight crime in their neighbourhood because the police alone cannot manage to fight crime without community’s involvement.
Meanwhile, Sitale said he is investigating another case in which a filling station near Morwa junction was attacked by three armed robbers on Friday early morning and walked away with money.
He said that the criminals broke the filling station door around 4am and instructed the workers to lay down before walking away with money that was in tills.
“Investigations are still ongoing to establish the exact amount of the money that they stole. We have not arrested anyone in this matter, hence we’re pleading with the public to contact the nearest police station if they can see suspicious people misusing money,” Sitale.