{"id":49533,"date":"2016-05-27T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/echonews.sites.caxton.co.za\/49533\/copper-thief-caught-at-optimum\/"},"modified":"2016-05-30T11:03:53","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T09:03:53","slug":"copper-thief-caught-at-optimum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/news-headlines\/2016\/05\/27\/copper-thief-caught-at-optimum\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Copper thief’ caught at Optimum"},"content":{"rendered":"

W.O. David Mbenekazi, Hendrina police spokesperson, said police officers were at an accident scene near Optimum mine. Whilst there, they noticed a suspicious Nissan pickup.<\/p>\n

“Police officers noticed that the bakkie, leaving Optimum mine, was carrying a heavy load. They decided to follow and stop the vehicle,” says W.O. Mbenekazi.<\/p>\n

It was discovered that the vehicle was loaded with copper cable, suspected to be stolen from an underground shaft at Optimum.<\/p>\n

Read other stories here:<\/a><\/p>\n

Thieves live underground<\/a><\/p>\n

Video: Copper thieves found trapped<\/a><\/p>\n

(Full story) – Video: R1 mil to rescue Zama Zamas<\/a><\/p>\n

The driver of the vehicle, Sizwe Isaac Gumbi (33), was arrested and charged with theft of copper cable. A search on the police database revealed that he has several other cases of copper theft on record.<\/p>\n

According to a source, Gumbi, who is originally from Newcastle but resides at Kendal Power Station, told police that he will never stop stealing copper cable “because the money is too good”.<\/p>\n

Gumbi has appeared before the Hendrina Magistrates Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man, accused of stealing copper cables at Optimum mine, was caught after police noticed something fishy about his vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":49534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Jana Boshoff","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2885,7,2],"tags":[4670,1049,4671,972,1306,2698,844,2064,843,1088],"class_list":["post-49533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-crime-news","category-local-news","category-news-headlines","tag-copper-thief","tag-danger","tag-optinum","tag-police","tag-skelms","tag-steal","tag-stolen","tag-thief","tag-thieves","tag-warning"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Crime News"},"tag_labels":["copper thief","danger","Optinum","police","Skelms","steal","stolen","thief","Thieves","warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49533","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=49533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}