‘Cops ignored beaten woman’s call’

Galeshewe, Northern Cape - Five days after calling the police for help, a woman who was nearly beaten to death with bricks and an iron managed to crawl out of her bloodied kitchen and called her neighbours for help.

Doreen Pholoane, 52, was hit with a paving brick behind her head as she opened the door to her shanty in Tshwene, Galeshewe, allegedly by two men she knew.

“The two men then pushed her inside the shanty and hit her with an iron and their fists. She lost a lot of blood and was left for dead,” Pholoane’s niece, Kgakgamatso Motebe, said on Thursday.

While Pholoane was still recovering in her hospital bed at the Kimberley Mediclinic on Thursday, with bandages that partially hid her badly injured face, Motebe blasted the police for their incompetence in handling the case.

“She phoned the police immediately after she was attacked but they never attended to her.

“After lying on the floor in the kitchen for five days, she managed to crawl out of her shack and signalled to the community that she needed help.

“Even after this debacle, the police have until today - a week after the attack - not been to the shanty to take fingerprints and collect DNA evidence,” Motebe said.

“I believe that the police have been outright incompetent in handling this matter.”

She said that although she was not with Pholoane when she was assaulted, information she gathered revealed that the alleged culprits apparently waited for her outside the shack and accosted her with a brick before taking her inside where they again assaulted.

Kimberley Mediclinic spokeswoman, Denise Coetzee, said that Pholoane was in a stable condition.

On Thursday a brick covered in blood lay close to the blood-stained shanty door. Inside the shanty, dry blood was splattered all over the stove, while the iron that Pholoane was allegedly attacked with was in the refuse bin.

There were also bloodstains inside Pholoane’s bedroom.

“Although my aunt was assaulted on Friday last week, she only managed to crawl out of the house to seek help on Tuesday. Community members who saw her, called the ambulance and she was then taken to hospital. Police were provided with the names of the suspects in this case but until today (Thursday) there has been no arrests,” Motebe said.

She added that her greatest fear was that the delay by the police to collect evidence at the crime scene could negatively influence the case and allow the accused to get off scot-free.

“Evidence that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of this heinous crime could be destroyed because the police are delaying in their investigation. We urge the police to speedily resolve this matter,” Motebe said.

She added that the motive for the attack on her aunt was not yet known.

Meanwhile, the Northern Cape Women Against Crime, a body affiliated to Business Against Crime, condemned the attack on Pholoane, saying that it was one of the worst assault cases it has ever dealt with.

“We call on the police to take swift action and arrest the perpetrators,” Women Against Crime’s provincial manager, Sonja Faywers, said.

She said that there were many cases of assault on women that remained hidden in the Northern Cape.

“Some incidents of abuse are treated at home and women do not talk about them because they are scared,” Faywers added.

However, she defended the police from Motebe’s criticism, saying that it was only certain individuals who did not do their work properly.

“The leadership of the police in the Province must interrogate the investigating officer in this case because he or she is at fault.

The police overall are responding properly to crime and I have phoned the office of the Provincial Commissioner, Janet Basson, and she promised to move with speed to deal with this case,” Faywers said on Thursday.

Some community members who said that they assisted Pholoane stated that before she was taken away by the ambulance, she named her boyfriend and one of the men in the area as her attackers.

Northern Cape police spokesman Lieutenant Donald Mdlhuli said that they needed more time to verify the facts and that they would respond on Friday.

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