Police delaying Audi crash investigation?
July 26 2013 at 10:49am
By BRENDAN ROANE
By BRENDAN ROANE
The Star
The wreckage of the
Audi R8 that crashed in Rosebank in January, killing the driver and a police
officer. The investigation into the crash has not been concluded up to date.
Picture: Dumisani Dube
Johannesburg - The SAPS has either been
incompetent or has purposely delayed the investigation into a supercar crash
earlier this year that was shrouded in suspicion.
This is according to Dr Johan Burger, a
senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, who said the findings
should have been revealed already as it had been six months since the crash.
In January, the Audi R8 crashed and
broke into three pieces in Oxford Road, Rosebank, under suspicious
circumstances. The crash killed driver Areff Haffejee and policeman Constable
Goodman Lubisi. The police’s version of events, that Lubisi was kidnapped by
Haffejee after finding dagga in his car, was disputed by Burger at the time, as
well as a witness account and CCTV footage.
The Independent Police Investigative
Directorate (Ipid) completed its own investigation four months ago, but refused
to reveal its findings until it received a technical report from the police.
Ipid spokesman Moses Dlamini also
refused to estimate when the technical report - which includes an accident
report by police and a post-mortem by pathologists - would be received.
“It’s not done by us, I can’t say,” he
said.
But Burger has said the accident report
should take no longer than a week, even if police encountered problems.
“There’s no good reason why it has
taken so many months,” he said.
It should take a maximum of 48 hours
and even if police requested a specialised forensic team to compile the report,
this should only take another couple of days, Burger said.
“Either the police are being
incompetent or just not doing what they’re supposed to do,” said Burger.
However, Burger did not rule out the possibility of the police purposely
delaying the investigation.
“The police may be keeping them (Ipid)
on a line for some reason,” Burger added.
He said Ipid was not without blame and
should push the police for these reports, instead of waiting for them to come
to the directorate. “It’s a simple process of putting it in writing and
requesting these reports be finalised,” Burger said.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel
Lungelo Dlamini said he would investigate the matter and get back to The Star
later this week.
Meanwhile, a witness to the crash told
The Star that she had been trying to get details of the investigation herself
for the last few months.
Earlier this year, she said she saw the
car stopped at a traffic light just before it sped off and crashed. She said
the two men in the vehicle looked “relaxed” and she thought they were friends.
CCTV footage also appeared to show the vehicle travelling at normal speed a few
minutes before the crash, followed by a police van without its blue lights on.
brendan.roane@inl.co.za
The Star
