Murder suspects tracked 'through time'
Two suspects were yesterday (June 13, 2007) arrested in connection with the alleged violent murder of a woman in Cape Town after a highly sophisticated vehicle tracking device was able to retrace a stolen vehicle's precise movements for two days prior to it being tracked down in a rural area near Umthatha on Monday afternoon (June 11, 2007).
The drama began when a Cape Town woman who was supposed to pick up her daughter on Saturday afternoon (June 9, 2007) from her mother's home, never arrived.
After notifying the authorities, it was later discovered that the woman's vehicle had a highly sophisticated Tracker system installed and a family member then contacted the company.
Tracker then began tracking the vehicle on Monday morning (June 11, 2007) and found it shortly before nightfall in a rural area near Umthatha. Tracker crews as well as members of the Cape Town and Umthatha SAPS Organised Crime unit as well as The Umthatha Dog Unit were involved in retrieving the vehicle.
By Tuesday morning (June 12, 2007), police and Tracker personnel were confident that the vehicle's potential hijackers were hiding out in the area and called in specialised police tracker dogs to assist. The search continued for the remainder of the day.
In the meantime, the Tracker operational team, together with police, accessed the vehicle's travel history through the Tracker SkyTrax technology to see if it would provide any clues as to the whereabouts of the missing woman.
They discovered that the vehicle had stopped at two key areas. One, outside a bank in Cape Town and two, a house in Brooklyn. Upon investigation, police entered the premises late on Tuesday morning (June 12, 2007) where, sadly, they discovered the body of the missing woman crudely rolled up in sheets of plastic.
Meanwhile back in Umthatha, as night fell, police and Tracker members cordoned off an approximate 20-hectare section of the area and waited to continue their search for the suspects the following morning.
Suspects arrested
On Wednesday morning (June 13, 2007) the search resumed together with a Tracker chopper where, after several hours, the men were finally found and arrested late in the afternoon.
The suspects have been detained in Umthatha.
Says Tracker's Communications Manager, Gareth Crocker: "We would like to offer our most sincere condolences to the family of the victim and are assisting them with trauma counseling to help them come to terms with their loss. We are, however, extremely pleased by the fact that, as a result of our latest technology, Tracker SkyTrax, and the determined efforts of the police, we were effectively able to 'travel back in time' and retrace the vehicle's exact movements over the two days that it was missing, which ultimately led to the discovery of the victim's body. We are confident that this will assist greatly as investigators compile their case for court."
"Without overstating matters, in a technological sense we're now entering an era in vehicle communications where things that were previously perceived as being far fetched - the realm of Hollywood - are now not only in sight, but are right on Tracker's doorstep," says Crocker.
Tracker SkyTrax is possibly best known as being the technology behind Hollard's groundbreaking "Pay as you Drive" insurance offering, which created a major stir when it was launched in South Africa last year.
