Cape Town - Nine family members have officially launched an application for a class action against SAPS and the Police Ministry to claim for damages resulting from the theft and supply of guns in police stores to criminals by two senior police members.
The class action, spearheaded by NGO Guns Free SA (GFSA), represents four categories of victims which include children who were either killed or injured (represented by their parents/guardians), adults who were killed (represented by their family), and injured adults (who represent themselves).
The affected parties were shot by a “Prinsloo firearm” in the Hanover Park, Manenberg and Mitchells Plain communities.
Police Minister Bheki Cele’s spokesperson, Lirandzu Themba, said: “SAPS will be responding to this in due course.”
The families affected by the criminality stemming from the mismanagement of firearm control and safety includes Andre and Dianne Cornelius whose son, Dillan Cornelius, was shot and killed by a Prinsloo Firearm in August 2013 in a shooting in Manenberg and Melanie Kiel, whose son Dudley Richards, was shot and killed with a Prinsloo Firearm in 2013 in Mitchells Plain.
Other victims are Denise Mentor, the legal guardian of Leana van Wyk, a minor girl who sustained serious head injuries during a shooting in Hanover Park in 2012, Evenlyn Davids, the legal guardian of Liam Davids, a minor boy who sustained serious neck injuries during a shooting in Hanover Park in 2012 and Simoné Julies, the mother of Mogamat Moeneer and Mogamat Nazeer, two minor boys who were injured in 2014 following a shooting in Mitchell’s Plain.
Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo was convicted and sentenced in 2016 on 20 charges ranging from racketeering, corruption and money laundering relating to the smuggling and dealing in lethal weapons worth around R9 million with Cape Town gangsters.
He was recently released on parole after serving a short stint of an 18-year prison sentence for flooding the Cape Flats with weapons.
GFSA said they have taken on the litigation battle with a team of experts, relating to two ex-Saps senior members, Prinsloo and Colonel David Naidoo, who between 2007 and 2015 stole and distributed more than 2000 guns awaiting destruction in police stores to gang leaders on the Cape Flats.
In their founding affidavit submitted to the Western Cape High Court for an application for class action, GFSA’s Adele Kirsten, submitted: “In or around 2007 Naidoo approached Prinsloo and indicated that he had access to firearms in the Confiscated Firearms Store at Silverton which were valuable but that he did not have a market to sell them to.
As noted above, Naidoo had the authority to certify that firearms held in the storage facility had been destroyed.
Naidoo utilised this authority to falsely certify that the firearms at issue in these proceedings had been destroyed.
“Naidoo and Prinsloo colluded to steal the firearms in the Confiscated Firearms Store at Silverton and to sell them to, inter alia, contacts of Prinsloo which included Alan Raves, an arms dealer...Irshaad ‘Hunter’ Laher, a businessman who resides in the Western Cape,” an extract of the class action application papers read.
The founding affidavit also further details how the “Prinsloo guns”, between 2007 and June 2016, the stolen firearms were used “in the commission of at least 2874 crimes in the Western Cape”.
GFSA said further said two expert witnesses submitted affidavits in support of their class action - Mark Mastaglio, an independent forensic scientist specialising in the examination of firearms, and Richard Matzopoulos, an epidemiologist and specialist scientist at the South African Medical Research Council, who shows that gun-related death rates significantly increased as Prinsloo Guns flowed onto the Cape Flats.
Cape Times