Cape Town police are hunting for five armed men who allegedly murdered two guards protecting a bread delivery van.
|||Cape Town -
Police are hunting for five armed men who allegedly murdered two guards protecting a bread delivery van.
Police spokesman FC van Wyk said workers had been delivering bread at a spaza shop in Kosovo in Samora Machel at about 6am on Tuesday, watched over by two security guards who had escorted the truck in a small bakkie.
“While they were unloading the bread, about five armed suspects approached them and fired several shots at the two security guards.”
Zahir Galiem, 31, died in the vehicle while Hendrik Duiker, 44, died on the way to hospital.
“The suspects then allegedly robbed them of a 9mm pistol and also robbed the occupants of the delivery truck of an undisclosed amount of cash before fleeing,” he said.
Bread delivery guards are routinely targeted around the country.
In March, attackers shot six people, all Pakistani citizens, in a house in Mitchells Plain which was used as a bakery. Four died at the scene, another in hospital and the sixth victim was wounded. The attackers took off with a safe.
In June, Cape Argus sister paper The Star reported that the business of baking bread in Joburg had become so deadly that delivery men had to travel with armed bodyguards. This came after three drivers were killed, two injured and numerous others threatened for doing their job.
They all worked for Morning Harvest, a new bakery that has been operating for just over a year in Joburg.
In May 2002, in Cape Town, two security guards accompanying a bread delivery vehicle into Langa, were shot dead while seated in their Magnum Security vehicle, behind the delivery truck.
But in August that year, five armed men who tried to rob a bread delivery van in Khayelitsha met their match when two security guards with semi-automatic Uzis shot three of them dead.
The other two fled.
One of the guards said: “We just decided that we were not going to allow these people to rob us.”
Cape Argus