GRAAFF-REINET — At a prestigious function held at the Mpekweni Resort in Port Alfred on Thursday, September 14, the national head of criminal record and crime scene management, Major General Lesetja Mangale, presented Excellence Awards to honour outstanding service to members of SAPS.
Warrant Officer JJ Schoeman, of the Middelburg Local Criminal Record Centre (LCRC), was the overall winner as Best Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Expert.
Two of the awards went to members of the Local Criminal Record Centre (LCRC) in Graaff-Reinet.
W/O Ricardo Kayster was awarded the second place in the Eastern Cape for Mentorship, and Constable Johan Theron was runner-up in the Eastern Cape for Best Crime Scene Expert.
A case of Cst Theron’s attracted a great deal of interest, as he became the first officer in the country to lift fingerprints from an eggshell, leading to the positive identification of a suspect.
On February 25, 2016, he attended to a crime scene at a house in Murraysburg.
Prints were developed on a broken eggshell and photographed. There were similarities to a case from Jansenville from just a few days earlier, and Warrant Officer Schoeman from Middelburg then ran the fingerprints in the database and linked the suspect to the scene.
The Jansenville case involved a person who booked into a B&B on February 19 and paid cash for the stay. The next morning while the owners were preparing breakfast, workers notified the owners that the occupant of the room had gone.
When inspecting the room, they found that the floor was littered with food, and the TV and microwave were missing. Fingerprints were found on the inside of the sliding door of the room, and the suspect was identified as a foreigner who had previous convictions for similar offences in 2011. Cst Theron’s meticulous work led to the identification of the same man as the suspect in the Murraysburg case.
Commenting on the sidelines of the event, Eastern Cape provincial police spokeswoman Colonel Sibongile Soci said if it were not for Cst Theron’s work, the suspect would not have been found and arrested.
Cst Theron started with SAPS in 2009 and has been working towards improving his qualifications in forensics-related fields ever since. He is a member of the Canadian Identification Society, the International Crime Scene Investigation Association, and the International Association for Identification.
Captain Johan du Plessis, Sub Sec Commander of the Graaff-Reinet LCRC, told the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser that he is very proud of the achievements of the Graaff-Reinet LCRC members.
W/O Ricardo Kayster was awarded the second place in the Eastern Cape for Mentorship.
Warrant Officer JJ Schoeman, of the Middelburg Local Criminal Record Centre (LCRC), was the overall winner as Best Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Expert.
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