Three suspects in CIT heist killed in KZN police shootouts

Police graphic on CIT robbery,

2 minutes

Three men believed to have been involved in a cash-in-transit heist on the R56 near Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) have been fatally wounded during shootouts with police in various areas around Durban Thursday night.

A bystander was shot dead and a child wounded in a failed heist.

KZN Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi says one rifle that was stolen from the crime scene, which belonged to the fidelity guard, was recovered from one of the suspects.

“The criminals had planned to bomb a cash vehicle and steal the money, but it looks like they did not make the right calculation with the amount the explosives that they put in there because the safe was not opened. So the robbery was not successful, as a result, they decided to terrorise the community that was caught at the time, they started shooting around randomly. That led to the injury of those people, we were able to trace at least three of them. They were located in two different areas around eThekwini, and there was an engagement with the police on all three of them, and all three were fatally wounded.”

Mkhwanazi says they are investigating possible links between employees of the security companies and the robbers.

“From what we are getting from some of the clients, the Fidelity officials who were with us as we were working on this case is that one of the deceased is an ex-employee of Fidelity who was dismissed from Fidelity for other cases of misconduct that he committed internally. ”

“So we believe that, as we always say, there is no cash heist that happens without people knowing how the operations are run inside those companies. So in getting this one, and getting his cellphones we will be able to download, we probably be able to link many people hopefully, and then we can have more arrest, but there are many people that we are looking for and these three are not the only ones that are involved in heist,” Mkhwanazi explains.