Carletonville police’s communication officer, WO Peter Masooa, says one such hijacking happened on the main road through Welverdiend at approximately 09:45 on 8 June.
Two men were driving in their work bakkie, a white Toyota Hilux, from Potchefstroom to Carletonville. They had just passed the first stop sign when they heard a siren behind them.
The driver looked around and saw a white VW Polo behind them. The Polo overtook their bakkie and stopped in front of them.
A woman with a metro police uniform climbed out, walked to their bakkie and asked the driver for his driver’s licence. The driver had just handed it to her when a red bakkie stopped behind them. Instead of going to her car, the “metro officer” walked to the bakkie and called the driver.
As he got closer, one of the three men in the red bakkie pulled out a firearm and pointed it at him. They ordered him to get into their bakkie.
Once inside, the men grabbed him, tied his hands with cable ties and put a cloth over his head. He heard how they also told his colleague to get into the bakkie.
The hijackers then grabbed their cell phones.
“Don’t do anything stupid, or we will kill you,” they threatened in Zulu.
The thugs drove around with the men for two to three hours before dropping them off at the Toekomsrus cemetery near Randfontein.
Masooa says another such crime occurred at the corner of 4th Street and the R501 in Welverdiend at approximately 07:45 on 9 June. A man was driving his Isuzu KB200 bakkie when a man and a woman looking like traffic officers stopped him.
They checked the vehicle and said there was a “problem with his licence”. They then asked him to step out of the bakkie. The man left his vehicle idling and followed their instruction. He had just climbed out when a red Ford Ranger bakkie stopped behind them. Two men got out and walked toward him.
“You are being hijacked,” they told the man before grabbing him and forcing him into the Ford Ranger.
The hijackers covered his face, and he heard his bakkie drive off. The hijackers drove him to an open veld and dropped him off.
He walked to the nearest township, which was Mohlakeng in Randfontein.
A good Samaritan gave him R20 to catch a taxi to the Randfontein Police Station.
