Drama as man flees from roadblock

Lerato Maleke | Wednesday January 15, 2014 16:34

However, as it turned out, the woman was not home when law enforcement decided to leave nothing to chance and made its terrestrial and aerial call. Her daughter, Tsholofelo Mooketsi, told Mmegi that MmaTselapedi had travelled to South Africa.

The literal translation of her name is the Mother of Two Ways. But it was her son that the police were interested in; he from whom his mother takes the name by which everyone calls her. Tselapedi, whose name means Two Ways, is allegedly a regular customer of the police and was once investigated for the theft of horse reins from the royal family here.  Or so people assumed. But they were wrong. The man arrested by the police was not MmaTselapedi’s son of suspected equestrian interests. But the 25 year-old youth had come coasting - at a speed certainly faster than a racehorse’s - across three districts, Tlokweng, Gaborone and Kgatleng.

He had failed to stop for a random check on his vehicle at a roadblock in Tlokweng along the Mmaseroka/Matlala Road, prompting the police to give chase.

“He was asked to stop, instead he fled,” the Commander of Tlokweng Police Station, Superintendent Lebalang Maniki, told Mmegi.

The highly ambulant man is now inside a police cell where he is almost motionless while investigations - which will cover the origins of the combi - are underway. Maniki says the man is likely to face several counts, including driving a motor vehicle without a driver’s licence, driving a public transport vehicle without a PSV, driving a public transport vehicle without a P-Permit, refusal to obey police instructions, and driving a motor vehicle at high speed. According to MmaTselapedi’s daughter, a man with dreadlocks entered her parents’ homestead driving a white combi with blue registration numbers, B 123 AVG. The gate was open. The man parked his combi, alighted but suddenly jumped over the wall and ran.

“He did not utter a word,” Mooketsi said. “All of a sudden we heard the unmistakable drone of a helicopter and saw the police chopper over our house. About five squad cars also appeared. I was scared and confused.”

While the man that everyone assumed the police were after had once been investigated for theft the house where the fugitive was finally arrested at was near the abode of the Deputy Chief of Bakgatla, Kgosi Bana Sekai.

Police have confirmed that their quarry had no connections with MmaTselapedi’s family.

“He did not know them,” Superintendent Maniki said.