A New Crossroads family has accused Gugulethu police of failing them when they allegedly put a stabbing victim and her alleged assailant in a jail cell and telling them sort things out as friends.
Anita Tshalikhuba said she was stabbed in the face, head, ear and in an arm during an argument with something she was “chilling with at a friend’s house on Monday October 4. The disagreement, she said, had started the previous day, but had escalated on the day of the stabbing.
The woman, she said, “stabbed me with a broken bottle head“.
Ms Tshalikhuba went home and her grandparents took her to the Gugulethu police station to open a case at 4am and identified her 49-year-old alleged assailant. Ms Tshalikhuba’s grandparents said police then took the victim to the suspect, after which they were both taken to the police station.
According to Ms Tshalikhuba she was surprised when they were both locked in a cell and told to resolve the issue as friends.
But she refused.
Now her grandparents are demanding that Gugulethu police take the matter more seriously.
Ms Tshalikhuba’s grandfather, Apostle John Sawutana, alleges that “this is not the first time something like this has happened in that police station”.
In the past, he said: “We had such problems with the police turning the police station into a court.”
Gugulethu police station’s spokesperson Constable Sandisiwe Ngqele said she would investigate the matter and respond to Vukani when she had more information.