ABERDEEN NEWS — Late on Saturday night, Constables Mfundo Qashani, Thembela Nokhangela and Thandie Mdala were patrolling in Boy Jantjies Street, Thembalesizwe, when they saw a white Opel Astra being driven by a teenager, with two young passengers.
They became suspicious when the driver, on realizing he was being watched, got out of the vehicle and pretended to be looking for someone in a nearby house.
The police called the young driver over, and as he was talking with Cst Nokhangela, Cst Qashani noticed that both of the passengers had blood on their shoes. The constables then looked more closely in the car and found the carcass of a sheep, wrapped in a cloth, hidden behind the driver’s seat.
The youngsters tried giving false names and addresses to the police, who eventually managed to obtain their true identities, and went to their homes to try to speak to their parents. At one of the homes, in Carnation Street in Lotusville, Cst Qashani heard what he first thought was a dog in pain. He and Cst Nokhangela went to look and found that the noise was coming from an old corrugated iron tank in the yard, which had had a door cut into the base.
They were unable to open the door, so Cst Qashani climbed up and looked down into the tank, to find a sheep imprisoned inside.
The three boys were taken to the police station in the early hours of Sunday morning and charged. The boy who was driving the vehicle is 16-years-old, and his passengers 14 and 15. The case has been passed on to the stocktheft unit in Graaff-Reinet.
The live sheep has been returned to its lawful owner, but it is not yet known to whom the sheep that had already been slaughtered belonged.
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