A motorist (45) transporting stolen Transnet copper cables was sentenced to 15 years for damage to the infrastructure.
Paulos Suares was found guilty of theft of infrastructure and was sentenced and his Nissan bakkie was seized after a Transnet security officer spotted a suspicious vehicle parked next to the road on the R70 near Theunissen
on 29 November 2021.
The vehicle was chased when the driver started driving away when the security officer approached. The security officer lost the vehicle in the direction of a farm road and called for back up. He gave a description of the vehicle to another security officer who was on patrol on the other side of the farm road but he also lost the vehicle.
With help from the railway police, the vehicle was spotted again on the R70 towards Theunissen and forcefully pulled over. Three suspects fled on foot from the vehicle but the 47-year-old driver was arrested.
The accused claimed he was hired by the suspects to transport their items and he did not know it was copper.
The security officers and two police officials testified in court where they mentioned the accused’s manner of driving and the discovery of the Transnet copper wire at the back of his vehicle.
A Transnet employee also testified that the accused vehicle was spotted on 28 November 2021 near Kroonstad and an hour later near Theunissen in the vicinity of a high risk theft area, which is also near where he was spotted on the day of the theft by the security officer.
The employee verified that the copper found is only used by the Free State by Transnet, and that the accused version regarding transporting 3 people from Gauteng with their property, could not be true.
It was argued that the accused should be convicted of theft even though they could not pin point an exact time of place where the theft had occurred. The time the accused spent in the Free State does not go with his version of merely transporting people from one place to another.
The court ruled in favour of the state and the accused Paulos Suares was found guilty of theft of infrastructure and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and his Nissan bakkie was seized.
