A Sebokeng police officer died in a hail of bullets on Tuesday evening after her team stopped to assist a possible victim of crime, national police said.

Police spokesperson Brig Vish Naidoo said the officer had been picked up by her two colleagues just after 7pm. They were en route to report for duty at the Sebokeng police station.  

“As they were travelling, a few houses down the road [in Waldrift, Vereeniging] they noticed something suspicious happening around a vehicle. 

“It appeared to them that a person was being forced into the boot of the vehicle.”

The driver reversed to investigate, but the attackers opened fire on them, he said.

Naidoo said a bullet struck the 40-year-old sergeant, who was sitting in the back of the vehicle, in the back of her head.

The team rushed to the hospital where the officer was declared dead.

The other two officers escaped unharmed.

National police commissioner General Khehla John Sitole had launched the police's 72-hour activation plan to track the killers.