A Joburg motorist is nursing serious injuries after he was allegedly repeatedly assaulted by a minibus taxi driver with a knobkierie during a road rage incident.
Alan Molaudi suffered fractured ribs, a broken finger and a broken nose in the incident along Jan Smuts Avenue in Hyde Park on Saturday.
This came about a week after a taxi driver was caught on a CCTV camera driving into and assaulting a pedestrian during a bout of road rage in Bloemfontein.
Molaudi said he was travelling in the middle lane at about 11.45am when a taxi that had just offloaded passengers suddenly cut in front of him, forcing him to stop. As he drove past the taxi, Molaudi tried to speak to the driver, who responded by swearing at Molaudi.
APPROACHED WITH A KNOBKIERIE
When Molaudi, who was with his girlfriend, stopped at a red traffic light, the taxi driver pulled up behind him, got out of his taxi and allegedly approached Molaudi with a knobkierie. Molaudi stepped out of the car.
“He swung it and struck me on my arm. Some passengers tried to stop him,” Molaudi said, adding that the man pulled the keys from the ignition, preventing him from driving off.
“My car rolled back and hit his. He then hit the car twice, just missing the side windows. He swung the knobkierie again and hit me on my ribs and right ring finger.”
Molaudi alleges that two passengers also beat him up.
He said he blacked out briefly, and when he regained consciousness, he took note of the taxi’s registration plate.
Molaudi said the taxi driver stopped beating him when other passengers intervened. He was taken to Netcare Milpark Hospital
.
“If he had a gun he would have shot me. I am angry. My finger has been disfigured and I don’t know if it will be okay. I can’t breathe for long because my chest is sore and my nose is blocked. I can’t walk properly. All I need is justice.”
Police spokesman Thabo Malatjie confirmed that a case was opened at the Rosebank police station but was transferred to the Bramley police station
.
Meanwhile, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is determined that justice is done for a man who was attacked by a taxi driver in a fit of road rage. Last week, The Star reported on the incident, which took place outside a filling station on Andries Pretorius Street in Bloemfontein.
CCTV footage on YouTube showed the taxi driver assaulting the pedestrian after he had walked in front of the taxi while crossing the road.
The police said the driver was arrested a few days later and appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court, where the case was “provisionally withdrawn”.
But the NPA says the matter was in fact never placed on the court roll, nor did the accused appear in court as the prosecutor felt that the evidence collected was not enough.
“The case docket in this matter was brought to the prosecutor by the police with only one statement of the investigating officer who attended the scene of the alleged crime,” said NPA spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga.
“The prosecutor instructed the police to conduct further investigations and obtain CCTV footage, statements from the victim and people who witnessed the incident, as well as a medical report.”
Mhaga said the matter would be resubmitted to court once the investigation was complete. -The Star