Johannesburg - He probably thought it was a damn good idea, but a would-be thief caught in the act ended up spending 45 minutes treading water while trying to use the Westdene Dam to make a dramatic, aquatic escape.
Before starting his shift, Bongani Ngwenya, a security guard in Glasgow Road in the Johannesburg suburb, had just dropped off his bag at a guardhouse a street down.
But as he arrived at his post, he saw a familiar bag - his own - on the back of a man coming from the direction of the guardhouse.
Ngwenya approached the suspicious-looking man and asked him where the backpack had come from.
The man insisted it was his. Realising his lie wasn’t holding water - and noticing a resident leaving his home to ask what was going on - the man bolted.
Luckily for Ngwenya, he dropped the bag for the guard to recover before diving into the nearby dam.
But Ngwenya already had assistance from other guards in the neighbourhood, who surrounded the dam.
The man didn’t know where to go, and ended up treading water in the middle of the dam while several onlookers took cellphone photos.
Eventually, he decided to swim back to the shore.
Drenched and most likely embarrassed, he was nabbed by the guards and arrested by the Sophiatown police.
According to the I Love Westdene Facebook page founder, Clint Hill, the man stole a kettle from the guardhouse and used Ngwenya’s bag to conceal it.
While Hill saw the humour in the situation, he lamented that the man had been so desperate to steal a kettle.
Another member of the Facebook group, Musha Neluheni, was impressed by the suspect's fitness.
“He must be a very good swimmer! But that water is so foul! Sies man!” he wrote.
The Star