SHAUN SMILLIE
TWO TO go. Bongani Mojo and Victor Baloyi are still on the run, and detectives are on their trail following leads.
Khumbulani “KB” Sibanda and Ogies, two members of Gauteng’s most-wanted bank robbery gang, were arrested in Joburg on Sunday, two days after their pictures appeared in The Star.
Provincial police spokes-man Colonel Neville Malila said detectives assigned to look for the two robbers visited several homes yesterday, but did not find the men.
On Sunday evening, police raided a Norwood flat after receiving an anonymous tip-off.
As they entered the flat, a man by the name of Knotwell Masa reportedly opened fire on the officers.
He was killed in the ensuing shootout.
The police officers were then led to flats across the road, where they found Sibanda and Ogies.
Their arrests follow a crime spree that saw seven banks robbed in three weeks.
The robberies happened after Mojo and Sibanda had escaped from Boksburg Prison on March 28 while awaiting trial.
The two broke through a wall using handmade tools and used sheets to climb to the ground.
“They targeted banks across Gauteng, from Boksburg to Pretoria and even the West Rand.
“And consider that these seven are part of 35 bank robberies committed over six years,” Malila said.
He said the men had become brazen in their robberies, walking into banks without balaclavas and simply pulling out guns, emptying cash registers.
“It was like they were saying we are here, come and get us,” said Malila.
But what the men did not count on was high-quality CCTV footage that captured the robbers in the act at an Absa branch in the Monument Park Shopping Centre on Thursday.
The Star published pictures of the four suspects on Friday.
“We would like to thank the community for helping us,” Malila said.
Besides the two most-wanted arrested on Sunday, four more people, including a prison warder who allegedly helped the two to escape, were arrested yesterday.