SA cops shoot dead 3-yr-old

At legang Phalane, a three-year-old South African boy, has been shot dead by police, raising new concerns over a "shoot-to-kill" approach to the country's appalling crime rates.

Atlegang was sitting in his uncle's car outside his house in Klipfontein View, near Midrand, when officers arrived seeking a suspect.

One member of the squad allegedly saw a pipe that looked like a gun and opened fire, hitting the boy in the chest and killing him.
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No pipe or weapon was recovered from the vehicle, but Atlegang's uncle, father and the owner of the car were all arrested.

Pipe or gun?

"I stood there watching the man who had just shot my son sucking a lollipop as if nothing had happened," Atlegang's mother Mapule said.

"My child was too young to die by the gun. Is this what was meant by the shoot-to-kill statements?"

President Jacob Zuma made tackling crime, which affects poor black South Africans far worse than wealthy minorities, a centrepiece of his populist campaign for office, and has appointed a hardline new police commissioner, Bheki Cele, who has told his officers they must shoot to kill if their lives are under threat.

But there have since been several incidents in which innocent civilians have been killed.

One ANC MP, Angie Molebatsi, caused outrage last month when she told mourners at the funeral of Olga Kekana (28), in Pretoria, "This was her destiny, let's not blame the cops."

912
People who died in SA as a result of police action last year