Durban — The Ntuzuma Magistrate’s Court on Friday sentenced a man for attempting to rob a police officer of her firearm inside the KwaMashu police station.
The incident happened in November 2022 while the man, who was on parole for robbery, was being processed on suspicion of a business robbery. Sabelo Mbeje, 24, who was on parole for a 2014 robbery, attempted to take the officer’s gun from her holster.
Mbeje pleaded guilty before he was sentenced. He said that on the day, an officer took him out of the cells into another room for processing.
“In that room there was a female officer seated at a table with a computer on it. The male officer walked out of the room and I was left with the female. I saw she had a firearm in her holster on her waist and I decided to remove it by grabbing it. It did not fully come out of the holster as she immediately grabbed my hands holding the firearm and screamed loudly.
“We tussled over the firearm for a few seconds as she tried to disarm me. She fell off the chair on to the floor and I got pulled on to the floor as well, still maintaining my grip on the firearm. She managed to get on top of me, still holding on to the firearm,” he said.
Mbeje said when the male officer returned to the room, he assisted in attempting to disarm him.
“In the process of them grappling over the firearm, it went off once. I immediately let my grip on it. I felt pain in my right leg. I realised I had been shot and injured, and so was the male officer …”
Besides the matter for which Mbeje was on parole, he has two other previous robbery convictions.
State prosecutor Kaystree Ramsamujh said the fact that the robbery happened inside a police station could not be ignored when handing down sentence.
“The police officer was a female and vulnerable. The accused was calculating in that he waited for her colleague to leave before pouncing on her. The officer had to take some time off work following the incident. I concur with the accused’s defence that the police are there to protect members of the public and here we have a member of the community attacking the police.”
Magistrate Mohamed Motala sentenced Mbeje to 10 years’ imprisonment, half of which is to run concurrently with the sentence Mbeje was already serving for breaching his parole.
“I don’t know what you were going to do with the officer’s gun. It would have had much more drastic consequences for you had you managed to escape. We can’t run away from the gravity of what you have done. Even your attorney said there’s nothing more he can say.
“The police are charged with protecting the community at large. It is very hard for me to understand why you would do such a thing in a police station.”
Motala, in sentencing the accused, took into account that he had pleaded guilty and showed remorse.
“This was a serious offence against law enforcement officers and you have a history of breaking the law. You are a career criminal, and your life of crime is not an excuse for committing this offence.”
He said that he took into account that Mbeje was already serving a term of imprisonment, as well as the aggravating factor that an officer was wounded during the commission of the crime.
“You remain unfit to possess a firearm as ordered in 2014 when you were sentenced.”
Sunday Tribune