Johannesburg - When Inspector Marthinus Bann was alerted to a neighbour being robbed at gunpoint, he leapt into action. It didn’t matter that he was off duty.
He noticed that the robbers, who were loading goods into their cars, were armed and he knew he needed to be careful. He went to call for backup but he was shot dead before he could make the call.
Bann was two months away from retiring from the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department.
But his murder on Saturday afternoon would bring an end to the gang’s reign of terror in Edleen, Kempton Park. Neighbours in Flamboyant Avenue made sure of that when they took the law into their own hands.
On Sunday, Bann’s neighbour, Frikkie Botha, recounted how Bann had saved his life and that of his wife, his maintenance manager and domestic worker – at great a cost.
“I was outside with my maintenance manager. He was helping me clean around the outside of the house for my son’s fourth birthday party, which was supposed to be today (Sunday),” Botha said.
“I went to the shed to get garden cutting shears and when I came out, I saw a man standing there. He had already cocked the gun before I could ask ‘Can I help you?’.”
Botha was pulled into the kitchen by one of the alleged perpetrators, and he found his wife, Adele, his domestic worker and maintenance manager lying on the floor and being held at gunpoint.
“They threw me on the floor and started shouting: ‘Where’s the jewellery and cash?’ I took them to the safe and gave them the keys. I kept begging him to take his hand off the trigger and not to shoot,” he said.
A neighbour saw Botha’s wife being held at gunpoint and alerted Bann, who lived across the street.
“Oom Martiens came and he saw some of the men in the driveway loading the cars with our possessions. He turned around to go call for back-up and that’s when they shot him,” Botha said.
“His arrival distracted them. I can honestly say he saved our lives.”
Botha said he got up when the men left the house.
“I pulled out my 38 revolver, which I had hidden between my legs to stop them finding it.
As the men tried to escape the scene on foot, neighbours on the street came out, some with guns.
“It was absolute chaos! One neighbour shot one of the men through the hand and two other neighbours tackled two more of the robbers in the street,” he said.
He said the police caught the rest of the robbers, with the help of Community Policing Forum members.