“PLEASE leave us alone, we take care of old needy and vulnerable people in the community who need our help and support.” That was the impassioned plea from the Salvation Army’s director of Thembela Retirement Home after yet another crime against them.
According to Frankie Burgoyne, director of the Home which is situated in Morningside, she was at a ladies meeting at the Salvation Army church on Montpelier Road on Thursday morning when their vehicle was almost stolen. “The branded Salvation Army vehicle was parked near the wheelchair ramp. It was round 9.55am, we were sitting in the meeting a few metres away and could have seen the car had we looked out the window. At 10.23am I received a call from our maintenance gentleman who was working outside saying someone was trying to take the Avanza. I ran out to see two men sitting in the car, and another man waiting in a white getaway car close by,” she explained.
Fed up, since it was just two weeks ago that another private vehicle was stolen from behind the Home’s gates, Burgoyne confronted the men shouting, “Hello! How can I help you? What are you doing in my car?”
The two, “quite big guys,” looked at her and slowly got out of the vehicle and got into the waiting getaway car. “They just drove off, not even in any rush, just made a U-turn and left.
“By then, the whole ignition had been ripped out!” she said.
Burgoyne criminal activity in the area had become “very frustrating” as another vehicle had been stolen from their undercover parking while they were at church. “We had come back from church to find the car gone and it was parked in the basement behind a remote gate. It was still in the process of being registered so wasn’t insured,” she said.
“We don’t get any government funding so all our funds come from the generosity of the community. I just want them to give us a break, stop targeting us, just a few months ago we had to redo all the copper piping and change it to PVC because thieves were constantly stealing our pipes,” she explained.
The director thanked the Morningside Crime Watch Whats App group and Berea SAPS for coming to her aid. “The police were here within minutes and someone on the WhatsApp group circulated the registration of the getaway car which we managed to get but we realised it was a fake plate as the registration came up as Brown Toyota while it was a white VW Polo that we saw,” she said.
