By Anna Louw
Residents of the crime-ridden Alberton suburb of Mayberry Park are so paralysed with fear that nobody dared respond to a woman’s desperate cries for help.
She lay seriously injured on the roof of a car which had crashed into a swimming pool.
For hours 22-year-old Minette “Mieni” Botha, called in agony: “Please God, somebody help us, help me”.
| 'The car’s speedometer had stopped on 180km/h' |
Her cousin, 19-year-old Vernon Laurie, was trapped in the vehicle by his safety belt.
Rescue workers suspect he might have drowned when the car landed in the water after it crashed through a concrete wall early on Sunday.
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It is believed that Laurie had a learner’s licence and had failed his driving test on Friday.
The homeowner, in whose pool the maroon Nissan Sentra landed after its driver lost control about 80m before crashing through her concrete wall, on Monday again requested to remain anonymous.
She said she and her 15-year-old son were alone at home, when they awoke from the impact at about 3am.
The woman said she was half asleep, but suspected someone might have crashed into a tree.
She said she heard a woman’s cries about 5am.
“The screams also woke my son and he came to where I was sleeping and said someone needed help.
“I was too scared to go out, I thought someone had been raped, so I called the police, but nobody responded.”
The screaming continued and eventually the homeowner pressed a panic button which brought the neighbourhood security and the police to the scene shortly after 7am.
The woman said she ran to get a blanket to cover the young woman.
“She was traumatised, confused and shivering from the cold.”
The rescue workers broke down the other wall to get their equipment in to drain the pool so that they could get to the wreck.
“They pulled the young man out but he was dead. The car’s speedometer had stopped on 180km/h,” she said.
“I thought, ‘thank God there were no young children in that car’.
“This area is racked by crime, people are too scared to venture out of their houses during the day, and it is madness to do so at night,” said Melanie Dickson, mother of 17-year-old Zenobia Stols, who had asked if she could accompany her boyfriend, Laurie and his cousin on Saturday night.
“Thank God I said no, she could have died in the accident,” said the mother.
According to Stols, Laurie and Botha were on their way to visit a friend who lives in the vicinity.
She said the car belonged to a friend of Botha’s.
Botha is on a ventilator in the intensive care unit at the Union Hospital in Alberton.
Staff would not comment on her condition on Monday.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on July 19, 2005
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