PERSEVERANCE won the day when a Brighton Beach SAPS officer tracked down a wanted housebreaker after six months of investigation.
In October 2013 a man broke into a home through a bathroom window in Watsonia Road. He got away with R9,000 in stolen goods. Police were able to lift a fingerprint and identify the man, but he managed to evade arrest for six months.
In April 2014 another fingerprint was found at the scene of a housebreaking in Marine Drive where access was again made through a bathroom window. This time goods to the value of R15,000 were stolen.
Constable Samukelo Mamela, who was investigating the housebreakings heard about a man arrested in Montclair who operated in the same manner as the man he was looking for. The man, who had the same surname, but a different name as the one circulated had been imprisoned for six months for housebreaking and theft.
Cst Mamela identified the man as the wanted Bluff housebreaker and on Thursday, 9 July he was given a six-year sentence each for the Watsonia Road and Marine Drive housebreakings. He will serve the sentences concurrently.
“It is imperative that victims of a housebreaking do not disturb a crime scene until such time as the police have conducted a preliminary crime scene investigation and the local criminal record centre specialists have combed the scene for fingerprint and DNA samples. The fingerprints lifted from these two scenes enabled the police to identify the perpetrator and link him to both crimes scenes, which enabled us to secure a lengthy sentence.
It is not always possible to immediately identify perpetrators of crime if there were no eye witnesses, but criminals do leave behind evidence about themselves at scenes and they will eventually be apprehended.
The preservation of these crime scenes by the victims upon awaiting police investigation supported us greatly in our investigations for which we are thankful,” said Cst Mamela.
