Philippi residents beat, stone and burn man to death for robbery
“People are fed up and disappointed with the police and the justice system, and are now forced to take the law into their own hands.”
The body of a 25-year-old man who was burned to death after being caught robbing a house. Photo: Sandiso Phaliso
A man suspected of robbery was stoned, beaten and burned to death by residents of Browns Farm, Philippi, on Monday morning.
Residents say the 25-year-old man was a known criminal in the area who had been caught before.
He was alleged to have been committing a house robbery on Monday morning when he was caught in the act. He was dragged to a park and beaten unconscious with planks and sjamboks by about 30 people.
Residents say he admitted to committing the crimes. A car tyre was placed on top of him and set alight.
Police spokesperson Sergeant Wesley Twigg said a murder case is under investigation.
Residents spoke to GroundUp on condition of anonymity. They say that the man was killed because the police and justice system cannot be trusted.
The man was previously handed over to the police but released soon thereafter, residents alleged.
“People are fed up and disappointed with the police and the justice system, and are now forced to take the law into their own hands,” said a resident. “This will teach other would-be criminals that when you do crime, you pay with your life. You die.”
“He screamed for mercy and begged for forgiveness, but it was too late; the people wanted him dead.”
Community leader Mncedi Mlibo condemned residents taking the law into their own hands. He said the police should always be called when someone is suspected of a crime.
Support independent journalism
Donate using Payfast
Don't miss out on the latest news
We respect your privacy, and promise we won't spam you.
© 2026 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.