SA police lieutenant-colonel shot dead in KZN

Lieutenant Colonel Jabulani Ndawonde, the acting station commander of Ndwedwe police station in northern KZN, was driving home when he was shot near the Bhamshela taxi rank.

DURBAN, May 26 (ANA) – A 56 year-old KwaZulu-Natal senior police officer died this week after a group of unknown men opened fire on his vehicle whilst driving near the Bhamshela taxi rank in Ndwedwe.

Lieutenant Colonel Jabulani Ndawonde, the acting station commander of Ndwedwe police station in northern KZN, was driving home when he was shot, national police spokesman Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo said in a statement dated Monday.

Regional police had launched a 72 hour manhunt for the suspects, he added.

“It has been established from preliminary investigations that unknown occupants travelling in a mini pick-up truck opened fire on the Colonel as they passed his vehicle,” Naidoo said, adding that Ndawonde died at the scene.

Naidoo asked the public to assist police with information that may help with the investigation.

The killing of Ndawonde comes shortly after the release of crime statistics for the fourth quarter of 2020/2021 which showed KZN recorded the highest number of police officials murdered from January to March 2021.

Eight of the 24 officers killed in South Africa for the reported period were from KZN, and four of them were off duty at the time.

KZN also had three police stations listed in the top ten for the most contact crimes recorded.

The Umlazi police station in the Durban-south region recorded the most contact crimes for the period at 879, while the Plessislaer station was in sixth place with 791 and Inanda was eighth with 758 cases.

Plessislaer, Inanda and Umlazi police stations recorded the most murders in the country from January to March 2021, with 73, 63 and 61 murders respectively.

– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa