Baby kidnap horror

Published Jan 10, 2013

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Johannesburg - If Ifeanyi Jones wants to see his six-month-old son Revelation again, he will have to pay a R100 000 ransom.

That is what an SMS demanded, a day after two alleged kidnappers walked out of Jones’s Bez Valley home, leaving their nanny Veronica Kanda for dead and taking his son.

They also locked his six-year-old daughter in the house.

On Wednesday, police investigators were looking for a husband, and wife believed to be Pakistanis, who Jones says kidnapped his child.

The couple were Jones’s tenants and could be on the run with their three children, believed to be aged between two and six. The wife claims to be seven months pregnant.

“Please bring my son back, you said you are Christian and this baby has done nothing to you,” Jones pleaded on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, just after 5pm, a worried Jones opened the door to his house and found Kanda lying in the hallway, covered in blood.

“When I saw her, at first I didn’t recognise her, her face was so swollen,” Jones said.

For several hours he and his wife Khanyisile had been phoning the nanny and the house, and no one had picked up the phone.

Kanda’s husband, Daniel Kanda, said his wife had told him the attack had taken place early in the morning. She was carrying the baby when the couple attacked her.

“They wrestled as the couple were trying to pull the baby from her; until she fell to the ground, and (the couple) started attacking her. They were attacking her with shoes. The man tied a rope around her neck, that is when she collapsed,” he said.

During the attack, Jones’s daughter said she and the tenants’ three children had hid under a chair in one of the rooms.

She told her father that when the wife noticed her watching them, she grabbed a pillow, pressed it against her face and pushed her into her parents’ room, locking the door. “She saw them carry out her brother and lock the door,” said Jones.

Kanda was taken to hospital, where she is in a critical condition, with head injuries.

The tenants moved into the house on December 5. The husband, who only gave his name as Bobby, told Jones that the family had come from Durban.

They had been staying at a nearby hotel, but said it had become expensive.

At the end of the month, the couple said they didn’t have enough money to pay the rent and asked for a few days’ grace.

Last week, the Joneses became suspicious when they noticed that something had been added to their food that was cooking on the stove. They later gave the food to the family, who they then discovered had dumped it in the garden.

Jones suspects that they might have poisoned the food.

“I think now that their motive was to come and do harm,” he said.

Police are investigating a case of kidnapping and attempted murder.

Jones said the couple are in their early thirties and of average build.

Baby Revelation is small for his age, having been born prematurely. He had minor surgery recently and is on medication.

Police are appealing to anyone who may know the Pakistani couple’s whereabouts to come forward with information. Warrant Officer Risimate Maringa, the investigating officer in the case, can be contacted at 083 356 2718 or 011 403 3413 at all hours.

[email protected]

[email protected]

The Star

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