Police nab burglary suspects after chase

The vehicle crashed close to the Melkbosstrand police station.

Following a high-speed chase, which drew in multiple patrol cars and a helicopter in the early hours, police arrested two burglary suspects they say used a crowbar and tyre lever to break into a West Beach home. Police moved to block off all exits to the suburb after they were alerted that two men in a white VW Polo were fleeing the scene of the burglary on Tuesday June 14, at 12.30am.

Armed response officers spotted the car, and Table View police moved in to stop it, but it sped off with police and security personnel in hot pursuit, said Melkbosstrand police spokeswoman Constable Debbie Alard. Melkbosstrand police officers blocked the car off as it entered the suburb. Soon afterwards, the Polo hit a wall, wrecking both the wall and the car.

“The suspects then fled from the vehicle and ran into the nearby residential area and then into the bushes,” said Constable Alard.

SAPS radio controller Ernest Schulze called in reinforcements from Atlantis, Table View and Philadelphia precincts, and a police helicopter was also deployed, before two men, aged 26 and 33, were apprehended.

Police found a flat-screen TV in the back of the Polo, along with a crowbar and tyre lever. The car had false number plates stuck over its original ones.

The two men, from Nyanga and Khayelitsha, appeared in the Atlantis Magistrate’s Court facing multiple charges on Friday June 17.