The 18-year-old Donovan Ferreira and 22-year-old Elroy Kleinhans were found guilty of housebreaking and theft and handed a 12 month prison sentence each in the Paterson Magistrate’s Court on 3 June 2019.
This followed after they broke into the Paterson Post Office on 31 May 2019 at about 22:00, and stole a bag containing almost R100 000 cash from the safe.
After the case was reported to Paterson police on Saturday morning, swift police action led to the subsequent arrest of the two suspects later the same day at about 16:00.
All the cash was recovered by Sunday morning and on Monday, 3 June 2019, the pair pleaded guilty before court and was sentenced.
From the investigation it was established that Mr Ferreira is the son of a post office employee who was in possession of the keys to the post office. On Friday night, Ferreira accompanied by his friend stole the post office keys from his parents’ room at 22:00 and then went to the post office to steal the money.
The Motherwell Cluster Commander, Major General Dawie Rabie applauded the swift police work in the case by Paterson police as well as the Motherwell Cluster Serious Violent Crime Unit investigation team. However he gave a stern warning to businesses to take better security measures.
“We cannot believe that all the keys and alarm codes to a business premises keeping large sums of money are kept by only one person. Such a negligent situation is dangerous even to the life of that person due to possibilities of abductions and robberies. We urge our business fraternity to re-evaluate their security systems and procedures, such as keys and key keepers, alarm codes and setting of alarms and related routines, to prevent incidents like this from repeating itself.”
South Africa Today – South Africa News
