Police have nabbed three suspects following the murder of an officer in Mfuleni on Sunday.
The cop’s colleague was wounded and remains in a critical condition in hospital.
The National Commissioner of Police, Khehla Sitole, ordered that a 72-hour activation plan be mobilised in an effort to catch the killer.
National police spokesperson, Vishnu Naidoo, said Warrant Officer Hilton Joseph, 52, with 32 years service, and a 29-year-old constable with three years service at the Mfuleni SAPS were on patrol duty at about 10pm when they were shot by a suspect they had confronted outside a tavern in Diepwater Street, Wesbank.
Joseph was shot in the head and succumbed to his wound an hour later in hospital while the constable was shot in the neck.
The incident came a few hours after an off-duty police officer, Leyden Finger, stationed at Delft SAPS was stabbed to death in an apparent robbery close to his home in Kleinvlei also on Sunday.
Finger was stabbed twice while he and a friend were walking home from a tuckshop in Albert Philander Street, in the Conifers, Eerste River, at 2.30am.
On Monday afternoon, police made a break-through in the Mfuleni case as Flying Squad members followed up on information that the suspects were in the Delft area.
They managed to arrest a 25-year-old man who was being sought for committing a double murder in the Mfuleni area recently.
Brigadier Naidoo says the suspect was with two other people, aged 30 and 31, who fled the scene.
However, members of the Anti-Gang Unit caught them on Monday night.
The three are to appear in the Blue Downs Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.