It's tickets for robbers

24 June 2015 - 02:36 By Graeme Hosken

Two suspects killed in a shootout with police when they tried to rob an Angolan couple they had followed from OR Tambo International Airport to a house in Pretoria have been linked to 16 other armed robberies. Tyson Mdluli, 43, and Benson Kalusi, 40, were fatally shot during a police crime intelligence operation as they held up the couple and their Brazilian host on Sunday night in The Moot.Officers from the National Investigations Unit, the Hawks, the Gauteng Canine Unit and Crime Intelligence, and employees of Tracker, were on patrol in the area when they received information that an armed robbery was about to occur. The men opened fire on the police when officers tried to stop the robbery. The men allegedly received information about the couple's arrival, targeting them for jewellery and a large sum of cash they apparently had on them.A police source told The Times, the accomplice who survived the shootout is being investigated only for Sunday's botched robbery.Said the police source of the series of crimes linked to the men killed: "Most of these crimes relate to attacks on foreigners arriving at OR Tambo International Airport, with some of them having occurred as far back as 2006."Police spokesman Brigadier Vish Naidoo said Kalusi was awaiting trial for nine crimes and has been linked to four other cases through fingerprints.He said: "We have positively linked Kalusi to one case involving an 'airport-following' robbery which occurred in Bedfordview in 2013, for which he was awaiting trial. Mdluli was awaiting trial for three crimes committed in and around Johannesburg between 2011 and 2013. We are looking at every docket against them to see how many of them relate to airport-following robberies."He said the wounded man was facing two counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, and charges of possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, possession of stolen property and armed robbery."The firearms recovered from the scene of Sunday night's shooting have been sent for ballistic testing to determine if they were used in the commission of other crimes."..

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