It took the community of Piet Retief and the circulation of the pictures of an alleged truck arsonist via WhatsApp groups to finally nab him at his house at midnight.
These details were revealed by a private security firm, Anti-Crime Security Unit, contracted by one of the companies whose trucks were burnt on Wednesday on the N2 between Piet Retief and Ermelo in Mpumalanga.
The firm’s operations manager Bester Maree told Sowetan they caught the man in the early hours of Thursday, following an intelligence-driven operation, and handed him over to cops at about 3am.
Maree said they waited at the man’s home at Luneburg farm outside Piet Retief for more than five hours to apprehend him.
After they had circulated pictures of the man on WhatsApp groups and asked if anyone had seen him, they soon received information from a number of people who pointed them in the right direction, he said.
“We waited to check his house and he wasn’t there. We waited for him, and between 12am and 01:00 [on Thursday] he showed up.”
Maree said the man had been a truck driver for eight years and worked for a coal company in Middelburg. He said there had been a huge financial impact on the company whose truck was torched.
Maree said their firm did “all-around security”, which included installing cameras, alarm systems and conducting investigations for the company.
He said the company lost its R3m truck and trailer, and there was an additional loss of income amounting to R18,000 a day.
So far, 21 trucks have been torched in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng since Sunday, in what has been described as coordinated attacks.
Yesterday, police confirmed that two men were arrested in Mpumalanga. The men, aged 29 and 27 were arrested at their places of residence, said national police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe.
The suspects face charges of malicious damage to property, and one of the men’s identities is known by Sowetan.
National police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola said “the net is closing in on those behind these attacks”.
“Police are hot on the heels of more suspects, which involves the ring leaders of these sporadic incidents of criminality. Either they hand themselves over or we fetch them ourselves.”
On Wednesday, police minister Bheki Cele announced that 12 people of interest had been identified through investigation and intelligence collection, with most of them located in the northern KZN.
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