‘I did not try to sell my baby for drugs” says dad
A Durban father who was alleged to have tried to hawk his 18-day-old baby to support a drug habit last year has spoken out about the incident, which had tainted his name and all efforts to get his child.
MORE than a year has past since James Hendricks was arrested for allegedly trying to hawk his baby on a street in Clairwood. After receiving more than his fair share of flack from the greater Durban community, the Durban father is ready to set the record straight.
Hendricks spent more than four months alongside his brother awaiting trail at Westville Prison with charges of Contravening the Child Care Act and Negligence before a magistrate released them on cautionary discharge because of a lack of evidence. “I did not try to sell my baby for drugs. I was arrested because I was in an area where drugs were being sold on South Coast Road. I thought it was a random stop and search because we were walking in that area but they took my baby away and beat my brother and I up.”
It was only after he was taken to the holding cells in Montclair that the former Umbilo resident realised the severity of the situation. “My brother said he was sorry. He said he had been joking and had just wanted to see the reaction in an elderly couple’s faces when he told them he was selling the baby as a joke. He did not mean for things to turn out the way they did,” he explained.
Read the full story in next week’s Berea Mail newspaper
