Men try to pry nine-year-old boy out of car window in attempted kidnapping

After the attempted kidnapping of a two-year-old boy in the Middelburg CBD last Wednesday, another child was nearly snatched, had it not been for the locked doors of his mother’s car.

The family, who wish to stay anonymous, shared their ordeal on WhatsApp to warn the community to be extra vigilant, especially women with children passing through the CBD.

The father told the Middelburg Observer that both his wife and three sons were shaken by the event, but luckily they were unharmed.

The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon.

The nine-year-old boy was seated next to his mother when a man distributing pamphlets knocked at her window to give her one.

While her attention was on the pamphlet distributor, another man came to the nine-year-old’s open window, grabbed him, and tried to pull him from the car, while also attempting to unlock the boy’s door.

A second man then approached the boy’s two brothers seated in the back.

The pamphlet distributor alerted the mother about the struggle between her son and the criminal at the passenger side of the car, after which she grabbed her son by the arm and pulled him back with all her strength.

The traffic light turned green shortly afterwards and the woman sped off.

“We are grateful that nothing serious happened,” the father said, adding: “Certain crime circumstances warrant that we fight back. I’m proud of my wife and sons for taking such a brave stand against criminals.”

It’s unclear whether the men were armed like the criminal that grabbed two-year-old Raygan van Niekerk from his mother’s work bakkie last week.

When Lizette van Niekerk went after the kidnapper, he threatened to kill her with the large butcher’s knife hidden on his body.

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