Durban - A Durban woman who was hijacked with her family, robbed and taken for a five-hour ride by their assailants on the N3 last Friday, said it was clear that the crime was rife in the area where they were held up.
Sasha Naidoo, 29, said her boyfriend, aunt and cousin were driving to Johannesburg on Friday morning for a surprise visit to her mother who celebrated her 56th birthday the previous week.
In a Facebook post, Naidoo said they were pulled over by two suspects posing as police officers in a vehicle with blue flashing lights and loud sirens shortly after passing a toll in Villiers on the N3.
“They even scanned our licence disc,” she said and described how minutes later the family were cable tied, gagged and shoved into the back seat.
With “two guys sitting on top of us” and two in the front of the vehicle, Naidoo said they were robbed of everything and taken on a joyride before being dumped in Vosloorus in Heidelberg.
Speaking to The Mercury on Wednesday, Naidoo said many people had reached out to her after her Facebook post and among the messages she managed to read, over 20 people said they too had suffered a similar experience in the same area.
“So many people have reached out and it's so sad that the same happened to them,” she said
One person said: “The same thing happened to my brother and sister in law about two years ago, the same way, same place. They were left about 10 km from Heidelberg and they had to walk to town in the middle of the night. My sister in law's ankle got injured when they pushed them in the back of their double cab and she endured a lot of pain for several months afterwards. They also lost their vehicle, their trailer with all their luggage.”
Another wrote: “I shudder to think what you were going through. My eldest was hijacked for her car which they could not start. They murdered her and dumped her body in a veld in Standerton. We only found her after 5 days. Her 3 kids were so little.”
Further describing their own terrifying ordeal, Naidoo said they pleaded with the hijackers for their lives and for safety.
“These guys had no remorse,” she said.
After they were dumped in the field, Naidoo said they listened as the hijackers stripped the vehicle and discussed how they would kill them.
She said it was fortunate for her family that another vehicle that had also been hijacked that night, had two tracking devices.
Naidoo said a family of three, who were travelling from Johannesburg to their home in Durban, were allegedly also pulled over in the same way. She said they arrived with another group of hijackers.
The second family had two tracking devices on their vehicle, she said, and an alert was sent out.
She said Jaco Grobbelaar, from Tracker Connect, was their “saviour” that day. He received the signal and raced to the scene.
“It's absolutely sad that in this country we cannot even trust a blue light. And the only way to get help is to have at least 2 or 3 tracking devices in your vehicle,” she said.
Duma Ngcobo, chief operating officer at Tracker said it was unfortunate that this incident happened.
“We are glad that it had a good ending with assistance from Tracker. Our brand purpose is to care for and protect people and their things,” he said.
Thanks to advancements in vehicle telematics, added Ngcobo, it was no longer just about fitting a device to recover a stolen car, a vehicle tracker can play an active part in keeping people safe.
“A premium service, such as our Tracker Care service, comes with an app that allows the driver to share their journey with a friend or family member, who is then able to follow the route and know where the car’s occupants are and importantly that they are safe. The service also allows the subscriber to set safe zones and receive a notification should the car enter any high-risk areas."
Gauteng police spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo said a case of hijacking was opened at the Douglasdale police station and transferred to Heidelberg police station for further investigation.
“No arrests have been made yet,” Masondo told The Mercury yesterday.
THE MERCURY