As crime continues to spread in areas surrounding Laudium and Erasmia, residents are calling for more visible police patrols.
Residents say that the R55 leading from Laudium to Sunderland Ridge and the M26 (Erasmia’s Main Road) leading to Gerhardsville are extremely dark at night and have called on the Council to fix the lighting on these roads which have been nonfunctional for years. This follows an armed robbery this past Sunday night (October 20) at a storage facility, which has over 100 units and faces the R55, situated near Sunderland Ridge. Entrance to the storage facility, which trades under the name of ‘Public Storage, Zwartkop’ is from the R55, via the side street, on Wierda Road and then a gravel path leads to the facility. The manner in which the entire operation of the robbery was orchestrated raised flags for the manager, Jan Duvenhage who lives on site and was at home on the night of the attack. According to Jan, his security guards reported 20 armed robbers-much to his hesitation, but Jan suspects the amount of guards were probably less who had entered the
premises in the evening in one truck at around 19:30 with firearms. Jan added, “The armed gang of thugs tied the 2 security guards with cable ties and then after loading the goods stolen from the various storage units, proceeded to my quarters around 23:45. When I heard them coming I managed to press the panic button, before they got in and knocked me down. Monitor Net, the Police Forensics and the Erasmia SAPS, under whose policing area we fall, arrived on the scene shortly after the incident. The thugs stole numerous bulk items, which was stored in various storage units, including diesel, gas, cigarettes, sugar, maize meal and cake flour. I suspect that it could have been the same armed thugs who robbed us end of last year, on 10 December 2023. In that incident the criminals had inside information of our operations of the business by two of our own security guards. This was confirmed when we subjected all our guards for a polygraph test conducted by our company, that is when two of the guards who were on duty that night, failed the test and then were proven to be accomplices to the crime. Our security guards do not carry firearms as there is no point for them to carry their own firearms as these very same weapons could in turn be used against them, considering that most of these robberies are carried out by a large gang of robbers,” Jan said. When asked by the Laudium Sun if his present security guards will also be subjected to a polygraph test, Jan said, “They will certainly be subjected to it and it will be conducting it during the course of the week to figure out whether the robbery of Sunday night was a random attack or if it was indeed another inside job, but given the history of the robbery, the company suspects it could be the latter.”
Jan further said, ”I hope that the Erasmia Police do more patrols in our area as we hardly see them and crime is certainly on the increase.”
