National
Pensioners wounded in Pretoria shootout─── 11:31 Wed, 01 Jul 2015
Pretoria - Nine pensioners were shot and wounded during a cash heist at around 06:00 at the Soshanguve Mall in Pretoria on Wednesday, Gauteng police said.
The elderly people had arrived at the mall to collect their pension payouts.
Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said about 10 suspects confronted Fidelity security guards who were delivering money at a pension pay point.
"The suspects fired shots randomly and managed to take a box with an undisclosed amount of cash. In the process, elderly citizens - two men and seven women - were shot and wounded on their lower bodies," said Dlamini.
Two guards were also wounded in the incident.
The suspects abandoned a BMW vehicle while they were fleeing from the scene.
ER24 spokesperson, Russel Meiring said the injured sustained minor to moderate injuries.
They were treated on scene before being transported to various hospitals.
The pensioners' ages were not immediately available.
In another attack on a pension payout point on Wednesday, a gang of heavily armed robbers escaped with possibly hundreds of thousands of rands in pension payout funds after a heist at Boxer Superstore in Clermont, KwaZulu-Natal.
An employee was injured when the brazen gang detonated explosives they had laid around an in-store ATM.
A police source, who asked that he not be named, was one of the first officers to attend the scene.
He said the explosive charges completely destroyed the cash machine sending chunks of shrapnel flying through the shop.
“When the store had opened for business this morning a group of men, as many as ten, had rushed through the doors brandishing handguns and assault rifles. They were definitely well armed and well versed in this kind of robbery,” the source said.
“They forced all of the people inside the shop to lie on the ground while they went straight to the pension payout point. They worked the cover off the outside of the cash machine and then set the explosives which detonated in the shop.”
The officer said that before the dust had settled, the robbers had already made their way to the blast site to collect the money.
Meiring said paramedics were alerted to the incident and arrived at the scene to find a female patient with minor injuries to one of her legs.
"It is believed that the patient sustained these injuries when she fell, running away when she heard the explosion," Meiring said.
She was treated at the scene and transported to St Augustine's Hospital for further treatment.
