According to the Mhluzi SAPS, captain John Maredi was seen with his children around town before he set his murderous plans in motion.<\/p>\n
He dropped his children, aged 13 and 8, at his Chromeville flat, before proceeding to his estranged wife’s home in Mataileni.<\/p>\n
He arrived there around 18:30 and forced her to her bedroom where he locked them in.<\/p>\n
Two shots were heard by a friend of Ms Thepiso Maredi, a clerk in the provincial crime intelligence unit, stationed in Middelburg.<\/p>\n
The friend phoned the police who, had to break open the door to gain entry to the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Both captain and Mrs Maredi was found on the floor with captain Maredi’s service pistol between them.<\/p>\n
They were both declared dead on the scene.<\/p>\n
According to police colleagues, the couple had a lot of problems which led to Mrs Maredi obtaining a protection order against him.<\/p>\n
Things got so bad, that captain Maredi was declared unfit to possess a firearm at the start of 2015.<\/p>\n
He underwent intensive psychiatric treatment, and were declared fit to possess a weapon by his employee wellness psychologist in April.<\/p>\n
Captain Maredi is the former deputy commander of the Hawks in Nelspruit.<\/p>\n
He was set to testify in the fraud trial of his former commander, lieutenant general Simon Mapyane, in August.<\/p>\n
A joint memorial service has provisionally been planned for Wednesday, 09:00, at the Eric Jiyane Hall in Mhluzi.<\/p>\n
Captain Khanyisile Zwane can be phoned on 082 462 1896 for any queries in regards to the memorial service.<\/p>\n
Read more related stories here:<\/p>\n
K-woord lei glo tot geveg<\/a><\/p>\n Geen blaastoestel beskikbaar<\/a><\/p>\n Video: Nog skokkende magsmisbruik<\/a><\/p>\n Send a message to our SMS line 37 940 or add us onto Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> to receive your free daily news updates.<\/p>\n Also check out our Video\u2019s<\/a> on Youtube<\/a> daily!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A local police detective who murdered his wife before killing himself on Friday, only recently had his service pistol returned to him, after having been declared unfit to possess a weapon by his top brass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":30993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}