Another vigilante attack in Khayelitsha has left a man, suspected of being a burglar, dead.
|||Cape Town - Another vigilante attack in Khayelitsha has left a man dead. A man suspected of being a burglar was assaulted and necklaced in the Nkanini informal settlement near Macassar on Monday.
Police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said officers responded to the call at 2am near the Chris Hani train station. The victim had not yet been identified.
Police were searching for a single suspect, said Van Wyk.
Residents said they heard the suspect calling out that he was being robbed. Veza Nethi, who lives next door to the suspect, said: "There were two guys that were suspected of robbing the man, but the one got away. When we got outside the dead guy was already badly beaten up."
He said none of the neighbours recognised the man and they thought he may have been drunk and mistaken the house for a shebeen.
Another resident, Mandisa Njaza, said they heard the suspect shouting around midnight and that the alleged burglar was "taken around the corner and burned".
"We tried calling the police over and over again but they didn't answer," Njaza said.
Nearly 80 similar attacks were reported last year, most of them in Khayelitsha.
Premier Helen Zille set up the O'Regan Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged police inefficiency and the breakdown in relations between residents and police in Khayelitsha.
yolisa.tswanya@inl.co.za
Cape Argus