Galeshewe, Northern Cape – An alleged drunk on-duty police officer nearly killed a bedridden Galeshewe man after crashing into a shack with a police vehicle on Sunday morning.
Joseph Mothwaring, 45, was sleeping in his bed in a shack in Ethel Street, Galeshewe, while recovering from an operation he recently underwent, at the time of the incident.
He was awakened by a loud bang at around 9.30am.
“When I opened my eyes, I saw sunlight streaming through my shack and realised that a vehicle had crashed into the room in which I was sleeping. The impact of the crash caused the zink walls and the cupboard, with all the contents, to fall on top of me. My children, who were in the backroom, came inside and tried to pull me from where I was stuck, but the vehicle first had to be pulled out of the shack for this to happen,” a visibly shaken Mothwaring said on Sunday .
Eyewitnesses who gathered at the scene were adamant that the driver of the double cab bakkie, from the police’s Mounted Unit, was drunk.
“We saw that bakkie parked in front of a shebeen down the street shortly before it crashed into this shack. When the driver got out, we could see that he was drunk,” eyewitnesses said.
They added that two of the passengers inside the police vehicle fled the scene after the crash, while the driver told another to also leave the scene because he (the driver) “would sort it out”.
The police have, however, denied that there were passengers in the vehicle. They maintained that the driver was alone at the time of the incident.
However, community members added that while the driver and passengers were not in uniform, the driver was quickly whisked away from the scene by uniformed police officers…
South Africa Today – South Africa News
