No answers two months after
man’s police custody death
2015-02-16 10:03
Pretoria - The mother of a Pretoria man who was
shot and killed in police custody is still searching for answers two months
after his death.
Lindiwe Sithole told Eyewitness
News that police had first said her son William had
committed suicide and later said he was shot dead while trying to escape.
She said the shirt he was wearing had five bullets
holes, four of them in the front.
EWN also reported that officers implicated in the
shooting allegedly questioned the same witnesses as the Independent
Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
Sithole was arrested on 17 December last year,
after he was suspected of involvement in a robbery. Several hours later he was
dead.
The
Star reported in September last year that 337 people
died at the hands of police in the six months between April and September 2013.
Ipid also investigated 1 924 cases of assault and
53 rapes by police officers in that six-month period last year.
Ipid also told shocked MPs last year when it said
that it was investigating more than 60 rape cases involving police officers,
said Sapa.
According to a document tabled by IPID on Wednesday
morning at a briefing of Parliament's police portfolio committee, 66 rapes by
police officers occurred between April and September this year, compared to 53
rapes during the same six-month period last year.
In November last year, a woman in Saldanha Bay
alleged that a police officer raped her when she went to report that she had
been gang raped, EWN stated.
