A 27-YEAR-OLD Pinetown businesswoman fell victim to a road rage incident outside Musgrave Centre on Saturday 20 July.
She was nearing the intersection of Silverton and Musgrave Road, looking for a parking so that she could go into the mall to purchase flowers for her grandmother. “I was driving slowly and this man, driving a silver BMW, started hooting wildly behind me. He then moved into the left hand lane, drove up beside me, rolled down his window, swore at me and told me to stop the car,” said the distraught woman.
She instructed him with hand signals, as her windows were still wound up, to drive past her. Her 26-year-old female cousin was also in the vehicle. “He then drove in front of my vehicle so I moved into the left hand lane to move away from him. He then pulled his car in front of mine in the left hand lane. I moved across again to the right hand lane. I was avoiding him so that I could drive off at this point,” said the woman.
The driver of the BMW pulled his car in front of her red Corsa, parking diagonally across two lanes. “He climbed out of his car, while leaving his car idling, and approached my car. He knocked on my window, so I opened it halfway. That was when he started swearing at me, telling me that women should not drive. I told him to calm down and explained that I was only looking for parking. He stuck his hand into my car, turned off my ignition and attempted to take the keys,” said the woman.
Once her car was turned off, her doors automatically unlocked and she quickly relocked her doors and grabbed her keys. “He started to get violent by grabbing, pulling and pushing my arm, trying to grab the keys from me. I was just so shocked at this point that I didn’t know what else to do besides stare at him in disbelief,” said the woman.
The man removed his hand from her vehicle and the woman wound up her window. She said the man went back to his car, knelt down by the driver’s seat and grabbed something. “I thought it might have been a gun so I pulled out my phone and took a picture of his number plate,” said the woman.
The man saw her take the pic, swore at her and made his way back to her vehicle. “He began hitting my windscreen and it shattered in three places. I started my car again and reversed away as fast as I could. At the next set of robots my cousin screamed for me to drive faster as the man was following us. We went onto the freeway and he was still tailing me. I was driving like a mad woman trying to get away from him.
“It has really traumatized me and what he did was completely unnecessary. I did not expect that kind of behavior from a grown man,” said the woman. She lost him at the off ramp to Port Shepstone. She opened a case of assault, damage to property and theft at the nearest police station. She is also currently looking for witnesses.If you were a witness to the incident email lloydm@dbn.caxton.co.za, with your full name and contact number with the subject line ‘witness’.
