Solving AKA: The getaway car, the hitmen and the airtime slip!
IT ALL started with security footage capturing the getaway vehicle in a Durban suburb just minutes after the shooting. This is how, according to inside information from various police sources, the investigation into the murder of the biggest artist in Africa, Kiernan “AKA” Forbes, swung into full gear.
A white Mercedes-Benz, believed to have been used as a getaway car on the night of AKA’s murder, was found in one of Durban’s townships.
It is also alleged that the vehicle was searched for clues and fingerprints, including DNA samples.
A source close to the matter revealed that an airtime slip was discovered in the vehicle and it belonged to one of Forbes’ alleged killers. Police used that slip to trace the killer’s girlfriend and, upon tracing her, they discovered that one killer was linked to Empangeni. They tracked the girlfriend and interrogated her.
Larger-than-life South African hip-hop icon Kiernan Forbes, also known by his stage name and to his fans as AKA, was brutally murdered on Florida Road in Durban on February 10, one of the most famous and busiest entertainment strips in Africa, a tourist destination visited by scores of people from across the world.
About a month and a half later, Forbes’ alleged killers are set to face the music. The four alleged killers were escorted about 1,500km from Cape Town Central police station on Tuesday morning back to Durban.
In an earlier story on Tuesday, The Weekend Argus in the Mother City revealed exclusively that the suspects were held in custody at the Cape Town Central police station following the arrest of three of them in Belhar on Sunday.
One of the suspects, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was spotted by the team getting into one of the escorting vans. It is unclear when the fourth suspect was caught.
The Sunday Tribune first broke this story at the weekend. The paper initially reported that police had arrested at least three men who were connected to the murder of Forbes and his friend, Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane.
Western Cape police spokesperson Colonel André Traut said it was a KZN case and referred the newspaper to the KZN police. When the KZN police were contacted, KZN police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda said they had not received any update on the Forbes case.
Neither Western Cape nor KZN police have confirmed Sunday’s events, where it was said that three suspects were in police custody following their arrest at a Cape Town shopping centre.
The suspects were taken in for questioning. It was later revealed by sources that the men were escorted just after 11am in a convoy of heavily armed and high-ranking officers to Durban.
The men’s arrest went viral on social media on Monday.
The men are allegedly behind the murders of Forbes and Motsoane in Durban.
Both men were outside the Wish restaurant on Florida Road when they were gunned down. Forbes was scheduled to perform later that evening as part of his birthday celebrations.
The murders were captured on CCTV footage, which went viral on social media.
It was reported earlier this week that an elite SAPS unit had closed the net on the three suspects in Erica Square in Belhar on Sunday.
It was further revealed that undercover police had apparently nabbed the suspects at an ATM in Belhar.
It is believed that one of the suspects is linked to a string of taxi killings in Empangeni, as reported by Netwerk24.
IOL reported that investigation teams had been trailing the alleged hitmen for weeks, following the murders in February.
AKA’s bodyguard, Anwar Khan, was quoted in the media saying that “protocol was breached on the night of AKA’s murder”.
Khan said if he had been with the rapper that fateful night, he would have taken him from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the show, from the show to the hotel, from the hotel to the airport.
“No additional movements on the side. In my absence, protocol was breached. Kiernan was called and invited to go to Florida Road, Wish, which he accepted and he went.
“Had I been there then protocol would have not been breached because the call would have come through the road manager,” Khan said.
The investigation is ongoing.
