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Suspects Detained: Three held for killing of EL penguins

By Lew Elias

EAST LONDON -- The curator of the aquarium here Willie Maritz had a really good day yesterday.

Police arrested three people in connection with the May 27 killing of nine aquarium penguins, he received a permit to collect replacements for the two pelicans killed in the same attack and police recovered a bakkie that had been stolen from him three weeks ago.

Although progress in tracking down the perpetrators of the senseless killing of the aquarium birds was slow, police arrested two men in Morningside on Thursday night and a 16-year-old girl.

The youth appeared in court yesterday but was not charged and the case was postponed to Tuesday so that charges could be formulated and further investigations conducted, Senior Superintendent Marinda Mills said last night.

"The two men were arrested and a warrant obtained to search their homes where items of clothing were taken away for forensic testing."

Mills said the girl had made a confession which led to the arrest of the men.

"The men, aged 18 and 19, were arrested and questioned for a long time on Thursday night."

They were later released until the outcome of the forensic tests, Mills added.

The arrests and court appearance of the two-month investigation follows shortly after interest was shown in the case by both the SABC's Special Assignment and M-Net's Carte Blanche news actuality programmes.

The Special Assignment team has been in the city for the past 10 days chasing leads and interviewing people while Carte Blanche has been working on the killings for the past three weeks.

The competition between the two programmes forced the police to speed up their investigation.

"The fact that a private investigator and the media became involved by interviewing people forced us to move our plans forward and make arrests," Mills said, adding that the case had at all times been receiving priority.

"We had been working around the clock on this and because of rewards being offered a lot of false leads were given to us which had to be followed up -- which took time."

Maritz said that he had regularly called the investigating officer, Inspector Quinton Kowie, "at least once a week" but had been told that no or little progress had been made in the investigation.

By late yesterday afternoon Maritz still had to be officially informed of the arrests and court appearance.

At this stage it is not known whether the people would be charged for contraventions of the Seabird and Seal Act which carries a maximum fine of R200 or the Animal Protection Act which carries a maximum sentence of a R20000 fine or 12 months imprisonment.

Maritz said he was excited that progress had been made in the case; he was also feeling well disposed towards the police as they had "recovered a bakkie that had been stolen three weeks ago".

He also received a permit yesterday to take possession of two pelicans to replace the two killed at the same time as the penguins.

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