Presidential protection officer commits suicide after conscience catches up with him [VIDEO]

A police sergeant and member of presidential protection who was linked to the death of a woman in a hit-and-run in Durban allegedly took his own life in a hotel while investigations were on his trail.

The Police Commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal, General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, has already expressed his suspicions that the officer was trying to cover his tracks but then took his life when his conscience and the investigation caught up with him.

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Number plate falls off police car

Colonel Robert Netshiunda of the commissioner’s office explained that police in Phoenix are still investigating the apparent hit-and-run incident in which a 26-year-old woman died after she was struck by a vehicle that failed to stop on Phoenix Highway, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“The driver of the [police] vehicle failed to stop at the accident scene; however, it was reported that there was a person who went to the accident scene to pick up a front registration plate which fell off the vehicle during the accident,” said Netshiunda.

A case of culpable homicide was opened at Phoenix Police Station while a sergeant, who was the last person to be in possession of the vehicle, went to the same station to open a case of theft of a motor vehicle.

The vehicle was later found abandoned in some sugarcane fields on Saturday morning.

“On Monday morning, police received reports that the 48-year-old police sergeant who was implicated in the hit-and-run incident had taken his own life.”

ALSO READ: Family of hit-and-run victim Olivia Sieff say sentencing not enough to ease their pain

‘It was just strange’

General Mkhwanazi told eNCA there were questions around whether the officer was telling the truth when he said the vehicle was stolen.

“A difficult-to-answer question is: why would the vehicle be stolen in the middle of the night but only reported at 10 am? I mean, the sun comes up at 6 am, but you wait until 10am before you realise that the police car in your own yard is no longer there. It was just strange,” he said.

“I think he realised what he has done; that is wrong, so he then disappeared… He had got himself into one of the hotels around Durban, and that is when he committed suicide.”

Watch Mkhwanazi discuss the incident below:

Three hundred cops take their own lives since 2017

Last month, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said the number of suicides recorded within the police service ranks the nation’s thin blue line among the highest in the world.

This comes after a Limpopo sergeant allegedly murdered a senior colleague on 28 July, before turning his gun on himself.

Popcru acknowledged the implementation of programmes designed to assist with officers’ mental health but said the programmes had many shortcomings.

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“There are claims of lack of confidentiality, and that there are no regular visits to victims, and that the services are stigmatised, limiting individuals’ upward mobility within the ranks,” stated Popcru.

Highlighting the understaffed service, Popcru said this was exacerbated by at least 300 officers taking their own lives since 2017.

Additional reporting by Jarryd Westerdale.