A police task team assembled to track down hitmen who robbed and shot dead a police warrant officer has made a breakthrough in less than two days since the murder.
“The official statement has not been released yet, but it is correct that a suspected shooter has been caught,” said a senior police officer not authorised to speak to the media.
“A police officer was also brought in for questioning.”
He said the suspected assassins were tracked down by the King Cetshwayo SA Police Service task team and members of the Hawks.
Warrant Officer Nkosinathi Ntinga and his wife, a sergeant attached to the KwaMbonambi police station, and a senior police clerk who was visiting the couple were in the house when the hitmen pounced on Tuesday.
It alleged that the assailants left Ntinga’s wife behind.
The clerk, who has not been named, was apparently thrown out of a moving vehicle but survived. However, Ntinga was not that lucky.
His lifeless body was found riddled with bullets at the Umsunduzi riverbank.
A stolen vehicle was abandoned near sugarcane fields not far away from the scene where Ntinga was left dead.
KwaMbonambi near the rural town of Mtubatuba is notorious for police killings.
In 2019, a police detective Sergeant Sakhile Wiseman Nsibande was shot dead while conducting a raid in the area.
Other officers who were with him survived the attack.
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