SAPS to further probe cause of fatal Hennops river car crash

JOHANNESBURG - Police will continue with their investigation into what may have caused the crash that claimed the lives of three Free State cops last week. 

On Thursday, police recovered the white VW Polo from the Hennops River in Centurion. 

Constables Cebekhulu Linda, Keamogetswe Buys and Boipelo Senoge were travelling in the vehicle from Bloemfontein to Polokwane when they crashed into the river in the early hours of Thursday morning last week. 

CCTV footage from a petrol station near the Grasmere Toll Plaza, in Lenasia, captured one of the three Free State cops and the vehicle she was travelling in with her colleagues just after 1:30am last week. 

A man, in a Nissan NP200, is seen in the footage pulling up next to the cops' VW Polo and looking at them suspiciously before driving off. 

National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola says police interviewed the man in the video and his employer. 

“They were overtaking each other along the road, and at some point, he felt uncomfortable and wanted to see who was in the car. After he saw it was two ladies and a man, he felt much more comfortable and he left.” 

Masemola says they further spoke to the man’s employer to verify his story and were satisfied that he had nothing to do with the officers’ deaths. 

He also clarified that the discovery of the body of a groundskeeper from Lyttleton Police Station in the river was unrelated to the cops’ vehicle crash. 

Police claim the reason they allocated so many resources to finding three missing cops was to ensure there was no foul play involved. 

Masemola says they needed to get to the bottom of the case to give the families of the deceased and South Africans answers. 

“We’re not saying police are more important than the public, everybody is important. But remember as you were all saying, that you were suspecting something else, hence we made sure we find out what exactly happened.”